India's Adani Group has withdrawn its request for a US government-backed loan to construct a port in Sri Lanka seen as a counter to a rival Chinese project, according to company filings.

Israel’s strikes on Syria following the fall of longtime president Basher Al-Assad violate international law, United Nations experts said yesterday, branding Israel’s attempts to “preemptively disarm” its foes as “lawless”.

Israel’s arrest of almost 30 mostly Jewish citizens who allegedly spied for Iran in nine covert cells has caused alarm in the country and points to Tehran’s biggest effort in decades to infiltrate its arch foe, four Israeli security sources said.

The Afghan minister for refugees was killed yesterday in a suicide bombing at the ministry’s offices in the capital Kabul, government sources said, blaming the Islamic State group for the attack which has not been claimed.

Forty migrants are feared dead off Italy’s Lampedusa island after a lone 11-year-old survivor said the boat she was on capsized three days ago, a rescue group said yesterday.

President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that Russia would develop artificial intelligence with BRICS partners and other countries, a bid to challenge the dominance of the United States in one of the most disruptive technologies of the 21st Century.

Israeli air attacks across the Gaza Strip killed at least 38 Palestinians yesterday, most of them in an airstrike on a house in Beit Lahiya town in the north of the enclave, medics said.

"We would like to see the situation in the country stabilised somehow as soon as possible," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

"Their human capital, their experience will allow the country to flourish," Bashir said in an interview published Wednesday.

Almost 30, mostly Jewish citizens, allegedly spied for Iran in nine covert cells and caused alarm in Israel

"Both those countries are losing numbers that nobody can believe. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers are being killed," Trump said, replying to a question about his top priority on the international stage.

US officials, engaging with rebels led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), urged them not to assume automatic leadership of the country but instead run an inclusive process to form a transitional government.

The China-based companies identified include Zhejiang Uniview Technologies, which US officials accuse of enabling human rights violations such as surveillance of Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups.

The Kremlin said on Monday that President Vladimir Putin had made the decision to grant asylum in Russia to Assad

Says a senior prisons official

An Israeli military incursion into Syria has reached about 25 km (16 miles) southwest of Damascus, Syrian security sources and media reports said yesterday, after Israel seized a buffer zone in southern Syria and launched air strikes on Syrian army and air bases overnight.

Indian opposition parties yesterday moved to impeach Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar, a spokesman said, accusing him of being partisan in his role as chairman of parliament’s upper house, in a first such move in the country’s history.

China is deploying its largest navy fleet in regional waters in nearly three decades, posing a threat to Taiwan that is more pronounced than previous Chinese war games, the Taiwanese defence ministry said yesterday.

This year has been “particularly deadly” for journalists with 104 killed worldwide, over half of them being in Gaza, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said yesterday.

Rival packs of stray dogs scavenging for scraps around the Chernobyl fallout zone may be evolving faster than other animals to survive in one of the most hostile environments on Earth.