The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have signed agreements for normalising relations with Israel, becoming the latest Arab states to break a longstanding taboo in a strategic realignment of Middle Eastern countries against Iran.

India has doubled the budget for vital roads and bridges along the undemarcated border with China in recent years in response to Beijing’s rapid infrastructure development on its side, the Indian defence minister said yesterday.

The knock-on effects of the coronavirus pandemic have halted and reversed global health progress, setting it back 25 years and exposing millions to the risk of deadly disease and poverty, a report by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation warned yesterday.

Iran yesterday warned the US against making a “strategic mistake” after President Donald Trump threatened Tehran over reports it planned to avenge the killing of top general Qasem Soleimani.

Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan will be the first Indian celebrity to lend his voice to Amazon’s Alexa digital assistant starting next year, as the Silicon Valley giant expands its presence in the massive market.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Monday he would like convicted rapists to be publicly executed or chemically castrated, reacting to a question on the rape of a woman on a highway last week that has caused uproar in the South Asian nation.

European Union leaders told Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday to open up markets, respect minorities and step back from a crackdown in Hong Kong, also asserting that Europe would no longer be taken advantage of in trade.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson lashed out at the European Union on Monday as he won initial approval for a plan to breach the Brexit treaty, saying the move was needed because the bloc had refused to take a “revolver off the table” in trade talks.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has called President Donald Trump a “climate arsonist” for failing to acknowledge the role of global warming in the Western wildfires, while Trump said forest management was the key to controlling the blazes.

The World Trade Organization ruled on Tuesday that additional tariffs imposed by the United States against China in 2018 were inconsistent with global trading rules.

Hurricane Sally drew closer to the US Gulf Coast on Tuesday morning, bringing heavy rains and surging water ahead of its expected landfall as a Category 2 hurricane, with the chance of further strengthening possible.

Coronavirus vaccines being developed in China may be ready for use by the general public as early as November, an official with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.

US President Donald Trump is set to preside over the signing of historic diplomatic deals between Israel and two Gulf Arab nations that could herald a dramatic shift in Middle East power dynamics and give him a boost ahead of the November election.

Renowned Bangladeshi actress Jaya Ahsan has joined leaders and celebrities from across the Commonwealth for the ‘Commonwealth Says NO MORE’ campaign against domestic and sexual violence.

The number of incidents of violence against journalists covering protests across the world has risen sharply, with police and security forces the main culprits, the United Nations cultural agency said yesterday.

Two Indian officials said Chinese troops were laying a network of optical fibre cables at a western Himalayan flashpoint with India, suggesting they were digging in for the long haul despite high-level talks aimed at resolving a standoff there.

Myanmar’s apparent continued targeting of civilians in the country’s Rakhine and Chin states could constitute new war crimes and crimes against humanity, the UN rights chief said yesterday.

Saudi Arabia will partially lift its suspension on international flights from today, the interior ministry said, six months after travel curbs were imposed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The German government said yesterday that laboratories in France and Sweden have confirmed its own findings that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent.

Former Jawaharlal Nehru University student Umar Khalid has been arrested by the Delhi Police’s special cell for his alleged role in the riots that broke out in north-east neighbourhoods of the national capital in February this year.