SYDNEY: Severe Tropical Cyclone Zelia powered into Australia’s minerals-rich west coast yesterday, with gusts of 290 kilometres per hour sparking emergency warnings and closing ports. The slow-moving cyclone was at the highest category of five as it landed east of Port Hedland — one of the world’s busiest iron ore
SANTIAGO (Chile): A humpback whale briefly swallowed a kayaker in southern Chile, before spitting him out unharmed, an amazing escape that was all captured on video. Adrian Simancas was paddling off the Patagonian city of Punta Arenas on Saturday when the giant baleen surged out of the water swallowing him
TOKYO: Nissan and Honda shares surged in Tokyo yesterday after the auto giants confirmed they scrapped merger talks and Nissan detailed restructuring plans. Nissan shares soared 8.17 percent to 449 yen in early trade before easing to 439.5 yen, while Honda shares rose 4.46 percent to 1,498 yen, before easing
DOHA (Qatar): Three-time defending champion Iga Swiatek advanced to the semi-finals of the Qatar Open on Thursday with a straight-sets win over last year’s runner-up Elena Rybakina. Second seed Swiatek staved off a fightback from the fifth-seeded Kazakh in the second set to win 6-2, 7-5. Ekaterina Alexandrova continued her impressive
WASHINGTON: Donald Trump was appointed chairman of the Kennedy Center on Wednesday, as a new board of trustees loyal to the US president brought his aggressive rightwing, anti-“woke” stamp to Washington’s premier arts venue. Trump first broke the news on Friday that he would make himself the Kennedy Center chairman,
BOGOR: Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed a series of agreements on Wednesday to boost trade and defence ties between the Muslim-majority nations, including the delivery of 69 Turkish combat drones to Jakarta. The Turkish leader was visiting Southeast Asia’s largest economy after travelling to Malaysia
HONIARA: An international scandal erupted on Thursday over a Pacific islands beauty pageant, hit by allegations of fraud, “degrading treatment” of contestants, and death threats to judges who were barred from returning home. The Miss Pacific Islands Pageant — touted as an endeavour to spur friendship in the region —
JAKARTA: Indonesian authorities raised the alert level for an eastern volcano to its highest level on Thursday, widening an exclusion zone and ordering half a dozen villages to evacuate before a possible eruption. In November, Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on the tourist island of Flores erupted multiple times, killing nine people,
BERLIN: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz accused election rival Friedrich Merz of breaking his word by accepting far-right AfD support to pass an anti-immigration motion. In their only one-on-one TV debate before the Feb 23 vote, Scholz, trailing in the polls, went on the offensive, calling Merz’s move “a breaking of
Hohenfels: A US drone buzzes over a Bavarian forest as soldiers apply lessons from Ukraine’s war, where drones dominate modern combat. Both Moscow and Kyiv use them for attacks and surveillance, making concealment nearly impossible. “It’s a transparent battlefield,” said Brigadier General Steve Carpenter. “Stop, and you die.” The US military is