DHAKA: North Korea has named a new defense minister nearly two months after rumors surfaced that the last man to hold the post was executed.A press release from North Korean state media, announcing a senior-level military meeting, called Pak Yong Sik the country’s defense minister.This

DHAKA: Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan, who had been on a hunger strike in an Israeli jail for 55 days, has been released.Adnan, who launched an indefinite hunger strike on April 6, had been placed under medical supervision at a clinic in Israel’s Ramla prison earlier this month.He

DHAKA: A summit of all European Union members planned for Sunday has been cancelled as ‘very difficult’ talks over a third bailout deal for Greece continue.Eurozone finance ministers resumed talks that began on Saturday afternoon.Leaders of the Eurogroup countries are now gathering in

DHAKA: The earth is 15 years from a "mini ice-age" that will cause bitterly cold winters during which rivers such as the Thames freeze over, scientists have predicted.Solar researchers at the University of Northumbria have created a new model of the sun's activity which they claim

DHAKA: Some of Libya’s warring factions have agreed on a framework for a peace deal following months of talks in Morocco.The United Nations says, reports Al Jazeera.Representatives of municipal councils and the UN-backed government based in Tobruk initiated a draft deal stipulating a

DHAKA: Bosnia’s presidency has condemned an attack on Serbian PM Aleksandar Vucic at a ceremony marking the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre.It said Vucic had visited the town ‘in a spirit of reconciliation, intending to pay respect’.Vucic was forced to flee the ceremony

DHAKA: Hundreds of people have been evacuated from villages around a volcano in western Mexico amid fears of a major eruption.Ash from the Colima volcano is falling on local communities, and authorities have sealed off a 12km (7.5 mile) area. The local airport has also been

DHAKA: Eurozone finance ministers are due to resume crunch talks in Brussels on a bailout deal for Greece.Nine hours of talks on Saturday ended without agreement and Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem described negotiations as "very difficult".Ministers have expressed scepticism

DHAKA: NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will fly past Pluto for an up-close-and-personal photo shoot on July 14 after traveling three billion miles.We've never seen Pluto up close. Until recently, the best photos ever taken showed it as a small dot. But on July 14, NASA's New Horizons probe

DHAKA: Arab coalition air strikes and heavy shelling between warring factions shook several cities in Yemen, despite a UN humanitarian truce which took effect just before midnight.Saturday’s pause in the fighting was meant to last a week to allow aid deliveries to the country’s 21

DHAKA: Ceremonies are due to begin in Bosnia to mark the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre.About 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys died at the hands of Bosnian Serb forces amid the break-up of Yugoslavia.Relatives of the victims will be joined by dignitaries including former US

DHAKA: More than 800,000 people have been evacuated from coastal areas of eastern China in anticipation of a powerful typhoon ‘Chan-hom’.‘Chan-hom’ is expected to make landfall south of Shanghai later on Saturday.Winds have been recorded at up to 187km/h and about 400 flights have

DHAKA: A powerful blast hit the Italian consulate in the Egyptian capital on Saturday, partially destroying the facade of the building in central Cairo.It was not immediately clear what caused the blast, which occurred at about 6:30 am (0430 GMT), when the consulate would have been

DHAKA: Greece's parliament has backed a government package of economic reforms aimed at ending the country's debt crisis and securing a new bailout.After a late-night debate, PM Alexis Tsipras won overwhelming cross-party support but saw some of his own MPs vote against him or abstain,

DHAKA: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif on Friday agreed to expedite the Mumbai terror attack trial. In a joint briefing after an hour-long meeting held in Ufa, Russia, Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries said the two sides will "discuss

DHAKA: Five airports in Indonesia have been shut, including in the tourist hotspot Bali, because of a volcanic eruption, transport officials say.Mount Raung in East Java has been spewing ash into the air for nearly a week obscuring visibility at Bali's Denpasar airport.For a second day,

DHAKA: Saudi Arabia's Prince Saud al-Faisal, formerly the world's longest-serving foreign minister who oversaw four decades of turbulent diplomacy for the oil-rich kingdom, has died.A statement from the Royal Court said Prince Saud, who was born in 1940, died in the United States without

DHAKA: Hackers that breached US government databases stole the personal information of at least 21.5 million people, officials said on Thursday.Those affected include government job applicants, federal contractors, and over a million of their partners, the Office of Personnel Management

DHAKA: The Greek government has submitted economic reform proposals to try to secure a further bailout from its creditors, eurozone officials say.They say they received the plan late on Thursday - just two hours before a midnight deadline. They will now study it ahead of EU meetings at

DHAKA: Iran and six world powers meeting in Vienna are said to be close to an historic nuclear agreement that could resolve a dispute that lasted more than 12 years over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Thursday that he could not rule out