MANILA: Floods and landslides killed 11 people after a fierce tropical storm dumped heavy rain on the Philippines for a second day, officials said Monday. Tropical Storm Yagi brushed past the Bicol region southeast of Manila overnight Sunday and was expected to make a landfall later Monday on the northeast
JAKARTA: Indonesian lawmakers scrapped a controversial plan to change election rules, a parliament official announced on Thursday, after thousands rallied in the capital over a move seen to help the outgoing president build a political dynasty. Parliament was preparing to reverse a constitutional court ruling upholding candidate age requirements, which
FENI (Bangladesh): Flash floods wrought havoc in Bangladesh on Friday as the country recovers from weeks of political upheaval, with the death toll rising to 13 and millions more caught in the deluge. The South Asian nation of 170 million people, crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers, has seen frequent floods
UNITED NATIONS (United States): UN member states on Thursday approved a treaty targeting cybercrime, the body’s first such text, despite fierce opposition from human rights activists who have warned of potential surveillance dangers. After three years of negotiations and a final two-week session in New York, members approved the United
PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES: Israel has agreed to resume Gaza ceasefire talks on August 15 at the demand of US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Thursday, as regional tensions skyrocket over the war. Gaza’s Hamas-controlled civil defence agency said Israeli bombardment killed more than 18 people
BEIJING (China): Torrential rains in China have killed at least 30 people and left dozens more missing, state media said on Thursday, as the country grinds through another summer of extreme weather. Confirmation of the deaths came the same day that weather authorities said July was China’s hottest month since
COPENHAGEN (Denmark): Heat kills over 175,000 people a year in Europe, where temperatures are rising quicker than the rest of the globe, the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) European branch said on Thursday. Of the some 489,000 heatrelated deaths recorded each year by the WHO between 2000 and 2019, the European
NEW DELHI: A network of mines on a Japanese island infamous for using conscripted wartime labour was added to UNESCO’s World Heritage register Saturday after South Korea dropped earlier objections to its listing. The Sado gold and silver mines, now a popular tourist attraction, are believed to have started operating
DHAKA: Bangladesh’s top court on Sunday pared back, but fell short of public demands to abolish, contentious civil service hiring rules that sparked nationwide clashes between police and university students that have killed 151 people. What began as a protest against politicised admission quotas for sought-after government jobs snowballed this
NEW YORK: Over the next two weeks, the quarterly results of Big Tech giants will offer a glimpse on the bankability of artificial intelligence and whether the major investments AI requires are sustainable for the long haul. Analysts at Wedbush Securities, one of Wall Street’s biggest believers in AI’s potential,