SAARC foreign secys begin deliberations in Kathmandu

The foreign secretaries of the SAARC countries on Sunday began their two-day deliberations in Kathmandu on the agenda of the 18th SAARC summit to be held on November 26-27.

IS kills 25 tribesmen near Ramadi

Islamic State militants have killed 25 members of a Sunni Muslim tribe during their assault on a provincial capital west of Baghdad, local officials said on Saturday, in apparent revenge for tribal opposition to the radical Islamists.

37 homes collapse, dozens injured in Japan quake

Helicopter surveys on Sunday showed more extensive damage than earlier thought from an overnight earthquake in the mountainous central Japan area that hosted the 1998 Winter Olympics. At least 37 homes were destroyed in two villages, and 39 people were injured across the region.

Turkey strained by Syrian refugees: AI

With Turkey’s government-run refugee camps operating at full capacity, more than one million Syrian refugees who have flocked to Turkey to escape fighting at home are struggling to survive on their own, according to an Amnesty International report released Thursday. Turkey, which hosts half of the 3.2 million refugees who have fled Syria, is shouldering the heaviest burden of what the report calls the world’s worst refugee crisis in a generation. ‘In three days in September 2014, Turkey received some 130,000 refugees from Syria – more than the entire European Union had in the past three years,’ the report said.

Fears grow in India about Hindu ‘Modi-fication’ of education

Indians were flying aeroplanes, carrying out stem cell research and may even have been using cosmic weapons 5,000 years ago, according to the chairman of India’s leading historical organisation.

4 Taliban militants killed in failed Afghan attack

Four Taliban militants targeting a compound housing foreign workers in the Afghan capital were killed on Wednesday night in a failed assault there, the police said.One attacker died when he detonated a vehicle packed with explosives near the gate of the Green Village compound in eastern Kabul,

Four killed in Jerusalem synagogue attack

Two Palestinians armed with a meat cleaver and a gun killed four people in a Jerusalem synagogue on Tuesday before being shot dead by police,

China blames rise in violence on drug smuggling from Southeast Asia

An increase in the smuggling of synthetic drugs like methamphetamine from Southeast Asia has fuelled a rise in violent crime in China this year, a state-run newspaper reported on Wednesday. In the first nine months of the year, police recorded more than 100 incidents of violent crime blamed on methamphetamine,