DHAKA: French lawmakers on Thursday approved a bill that will prevent Amazon from offering free deliveries of discounted books.The bill, designed to support small bookstores struggling in the face of giant online retailers, was backed unanimously in the lower house National Assembly,

DHAKA: The Egyptian army has planned military attacks on specific targets in the Gaza Strip in the event that the security situation in the northern Sinai peninsula deteriorates.A senior Egyptian security official told the Ma’an news agency, reports The Jerusalem Post.The source said

DHAKA: An estimated 500 passengers on a boat that sank off the Sicilian island of Lampedusa on Thursday were all believed to be Eritreans coming from Libya.The UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration said, reports The Straits Times.The boat

DHAKA: Russian president Vladimir Putin and US president Barack Obama may discuss the Syria crisis on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit next week in Bali.A Kremlin aide said on Thursday, reports Turkish daily Hurriyet.‘It would be rather logical to meet (Obama) in Bali, taking

DHAKA: A Saudi court has sentenced four men to up to 10 years in prison and 2,000 lashes for dancing ‘naked’ in public.Media reported on Thursday, says The Straits Times.In a video posted on YouTube, several men appear dancing atop a vehicle in the ultra-conservative province of

DHAKA: An Indian court sentenced a powerful ally of the ruling Congress party to five years in jail on Thursday for siphoning off state funds, underlining that public disgust with corruption is finally catching up with the nation’s politicians.Arvind Singh, joint secretary of the bar

DHAKA: A young Saudi couple divorced after the husband and wife argued over the name of their first baby.The couple, married for two years, could not agree what to name their newborn daughter with the husband insisting on naming her after his mother and the wife arguing that she should

DHAKA: Six of the most powerful rebel factions in Syria issued a joint statement on Thursday telling an Al-Qaeda front group to withdraw from the northern town of Azaz bordering Turkey.In a separate statement, rebels in central Syria also called on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

DHAKA: United States and Japanese officials said on Thursday they will position a second early-warning radar in Japan within the next year and deploy new long-range surveillance drones to help monitor disputed islands in the East China Sea by next spring, moves that may well raise

DHAKA: Chinese president Xi Jinping showed no sign of bending to South-east Asian pressure to resolve increasingly irascible territorial disputes over the South China Sea on Thursday, simply repeating past calls for dialogue.Xi, in the first address by a foreign leader to Indonesian MPs,

DHAKA: At least 80 migrants have drowned and rescuers were trying to save about 250 people still missing near the Italian island of Lampedusa after a migrant boat caught fire and sank, Italian media reports said. The accident occurred on Thursday morning, reports Al Jazeera.Rescuers

DHAKA: The United States and Japan said on Thursday Tokyo would pay a third of the cost of Washington pulling thousands of Marines out of Japan as it reduces its heavy military presence on Okinawa.US state secretary John Kerry, defence secretary Chuck Hagel, Japan’s foreign minister

DHAKA: In a bid to bolster moderate forces in Syria against Islamic rebel factions, the CIA has reportedly been expanding a covert program to train US-backed opposition fighters in the embattled country.The Washington Post on Thursday cited US officials as saying., reports The Jerusalem

DHAKA: The leader of Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn party was jailed pending trial on charges of belonging to a criminal group.A court official told media early on Thursday, reports The Jerusalem Post.Golden Dawn leader Nikolaos Mihaloliakos appeared before investigating magistrates and

DHAKA: US state secretary John Kerry said on Thursday that the United States hopes to engage with the new Iranian administration, but that any advances must be based on concrete steps by Tehran to give up its nuclear weapons programme.If Iran intends to be peaceful, ‘I believe there is

DHAKA: Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has a new leak of radioactive water which may have entered the Pacific Ocean, its operator says.Workers discovered water overflowing from one of the storage tanks late on Wednesday, plant operator Tepco said.It estimates that 430 litres of

DHAKA: At least 28 people, including 13 children, were killed and 10 others injured when the two mini buses they were travelling in were hit by a truck on National Highway 35 in lower Assam’s Barpeta district in the wee hours today.The two buses were going one behind the other when the

DHAKA: At least 12 people have been killed in a suicide bomb attack on a militant commander`s compound in north-west Pakistan, officials say.Reports said the commander, Nabi Hanfi, had been fighting the Pakistani Taliban in the Orakzai tribal region.Officials said gunmen fired shots at

DHAKA: Riot police have clashed with protesters in Mexico City during a demonstration commemorating the 45th anniversary of a student massacre.Protesters, some of them masked, threw firebombs, bottles and rocks at police who battled to disperse the crowd.At least 40 people were injured,

DHAKA: Indonesia`s main anti-graft agency arrested the chief justice (CJ) of the constitutional court for alleged bribery, an agency official said, the latest high-profile corruption case to hit Southeast Asia`s largest economy.Akil Mochtar, who was elected as chief justice for a