A pilot is threatening to deliberately crash a small aeroplane into a Walmart shop as they circle above the US city of Tupelo, Mississippi, police say. The Walmart and another nearby store have been evacuated and citizens have been asked to avoid the area. Local police have warned

The leader of Myanmar’s military junta will travel to Russia next week for economic talks, state media in the Southeast Asian nation reported Saturday. Min Aung Hlaing’s visit comes as both governments face diplomatic isolation -- Moscow for its February invasion of

The US has agreed to sell $1.1bn (£955m) in weaponry to Taiwan, provoking anger from China. The proposed deal includes a radar system to track incoming strikes and anti-ship and anti-air missiles. It comes after US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi last month

Sri Lanka’s deposed President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has returned home weeks after fleeing the crisis-hit country, officials said. The 73-year-old former leader landed in the capital, Colombo, on a Singapore Airlines flight from Thailand in the early hours of Saturday, local media

Russia's gas pipeline to Germany will not reopen as planned on Saturday, state energy firm Gazprom has said. The firm said it had found an oil leak in a turbine on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, meaning it would be closed indefinitely. The pipeline has been shut down for the past

An explosion at a mosque in the city of Herat in western Afghanistan killed a high-profile pro-Taliban scholar as well as more than a dozen civilians. Images on social media on Friday showed what appeared to be blood-stained bodies scattered around the mosque compound. There was no

Sri Lanka's former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa is expected to return to the island nation some time on Friday, after he fled anti-government protests in July, a spokesman from the Department of Information confirmed to The Straits Times.  Other informed sources said his

On 2nd September 1945, at Hanoi’s Ba Dinh Square, President Ho Chi Minh read the Declaration of Independence proclaiming the birth of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam (now the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam). The Declaration, which demonstrates the strong will and aspirations of

Australia is raising its cap on permanent migration for the first time in a decade to help fill massive workforce shortages. It will take up to 195,000 people this financial year - an increase of 35,000. The pandemic and Australia's tough border policies have exacerbated

Iran has sent a “constructive” response to US proposals aimed at reviving Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said, prompting a less positive impression from the United States. “The text that was sent (by Iran) has a

The United Nations nuclear agency chief says his experts are staying put after they cross into Russian-held territory in Ukraine and reach Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant, where both sides warn of potential catastrophe. An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection

The chairman of Russia's Lukoil oil giant, Ravil Maganov, has died after falling from a hospital window in Moscow, reports say. The company confirmed his death but said only that Maganov, 67, had "passed away following a severe illness". Russian media said he was being

The wife of ex-Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak has been sentenced to ten years in prison on each of three bribery charges. Rosmah Mansor was found guilty on three charges of soliciting and receiving bribes to help a company win a 1.25bn ringgit project ($279m, £240m). The

A Taliban official has said that Islam grants women the right to education, work, and entrepreneurship, and reiterated that the group is working to create a so-called “safe environment” for girls and women in secondary schools and the workplace. “I must say that Islam

China’s detention of Uighurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic minorities in the northwestern region of Xinjiang may amount to “crimes against humanity”, the United Nations human rights office said in a long-delayed report that was finally published late on Wednesday.

Malaysia’s former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has been admitted to hospital after testing positive for COVID-19. A statement from Mahathir’s office said he had been confirmed to have the virus on Wednesday morning and had been admitted to the National Heart Institute

Taiwan has fired warning shots at three unidentified drones that flew near its outlying islands. It is not clear who was flying the drones, but all three were seen flying back towards the Chinese mainland, said Taiwan's defence ministry. It comes as Taipei has over the past

Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader who brought the Cold War to a peaceful end, has died aged 91. Mr Gorbachev, who took power in 1985, opened up the then-USSR to the world and introduced a set of reforms at home. But he was unable to prevent the slow collapse of the Soviet

The last of his people, a Brazilian Indigenous man known only as “the man of the hole”, has been found dead, decades after the rest of his uncontacted tribe were killed off by ranchers and illegal miners, officials said. The man — whose real name was never known to

At least 15 people have been killed in clashes between Iraqi security forces and supporters of a powerful Shia cleric in the capital, Baghdad. Officials say dozens more were injured after protesters loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr stormed the presidential palace. The violence began after