DHAKA: Amit Shah, a close associate of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is the new BJP president, outgoing chief Rajnath Singh announced today. Rajnath, with PM Modi by his side, said he had resigned today as he is now a Union Home Minister in BJP-led NDA Cabinet. He said Amit Shah's

DHAKA: Palestinian militants have fired more rockets at Israeli cities and Israel carried out dozens of air raids on Gaza overnight, as hostilities intensified. Israel said four rockets hit southern Israel overnight and a number were shot down over Tel Aviv on Wednesday. The Israeli

DHAKA: Voters in Indonesia have cast ballots to choose their next president, in a very tight race between two candidates. They were deciding between Joko Widodo, the governor of Jakarta, and Prabowo Subianto, an ex-army general, reports BBC. Mr Widodo, known as Jokowi, led early on in

DHAKA: North Korea fired two short-range missiles off the coast of the Korean Peninsula early Wednesday, a South Korean Defense Ministry official said. North Korea did not declare a no-fly zone prior to the launch, the official said. No damage or injures were reported. The projectiles,

DHAKA: An attack in eastern Afghanistan killed four NATO service members and several others Tuesday. The soldiers were patrolling an area in Bagram when a suicide bomber on a bicycle detonated his explosives vest, said Wahid Sediqi, a spokesman for the governor of Parwan province. In

DHAKA: A strong 6.9-magnitude earthquake rocked southern Mexico and Guatemala on Monday killing at least three people including a newborn baby at a hospital and injuring dozens. The quake, initially measured at a magnitude of 7.1, struck the Pacific coast of Mexico’s Chiapas state at

DHAKA: Pakistan military's operation to dismantle terrorist safe havens in North Waziristan has displaced around half-a-million people from their homes in the tribal region bordering Afghanistan, reports Times of India.  An estimated 70% of them are women and children, whose future

DHAKA: Israel has carried out more air strikes on the Gaza Strip, following a volley of rockets fired by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas. Nine Palestinians, including a woman and two children, were reportedly hurt in the strikes. Hamas earlier said its members fired rockets to

DHAKA: Former Afghan Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani is leading the race to replace Hamid Karzai as president. The BBC reports this according to preliminary results. Ghani won 56.44 percent of votes in the 14 June run-off, election officials said. His rival Abdullah Abdullah had 43.56

DHAKA: The Fourth of July holiday weekend brought an explosion of gunfire to Chicago, with more than 50 people shot and nine killed. The violence was widespread in the nation’s third-largest city from Thursday evening through Sunday midnight, police said. There were 50 separate

DHAKA: More than 60 Nigerian girls and women abducted by Islamic extremists two weeks ago have managed to escape. Nigerian security forces and federal government officials had denied reports of the mass abduction from three villages in the northeast state of Borno on June 22. The

DHAKA: Shelling in west of Baghdad killed the commander of the Iraqi army’s 6th division on Monday. Prime Minister of Irak Nuri al-Maliki’s security spokesman said this, reports the NDTV. Major General Najm Abdullah Sudan ‘was killed by hostile shelling in Ibrahim bin Ali,’ said

DHAKA: Senior Hamas leaders have threatened revenge against Israel after air raids in the Gaza Strip killed nine people, the single highest death toll since the 2012 cross-border war. Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, on Monday accused Israel of a ‘grave escalation’ in violence and

DHAKA: The Australian government’s attempt to return 153 asylum seekers to Sri Lanka has been blocked by the high court. The move comes after Australia confirmed on Monday it had returned 41 people to Sri Lanka after screening their asylum claims at sea on Sunday. Politicians and

DHAKA: An earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale has hit in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas and neighboring Guatemala. The US Geological Survey says the perceived shaking of the quake is ‘very strong.’ The earthquake struck 14km offshore from the city of Mazatan in

DHAKA: Sixty-three women and girls kidnapped by Boko Haram last month in Nigeria escaped from their captors and have returned to their burnt village, CNN reports. The hostages were seized from the Kummabza village in northern Borno state on June 18 after a four-day invasion of the

DHAKA: Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday commemorated the 77th anniversary of the official start of war with Japan, condemning those who "ignore the iron facts of history" in an oblique jab at Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.   Xi and a cast of hundreds of soldiers and schoolchildren

DHAKA: Seventeen coal miners have died after being trapped by a weekend gas explosion in northwestern China, an official news agency reported Monday. The miners were trapped Saturday by the explosion at a mine 120 kilometers (70 miles) from Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region, the

DHAKA: A doctor says 16 Vietnamese military personnel have been killed in a helicopter crash close to Hanoi, the capital. The official Vietnam News Agency says the Russian-made chopper crashed Monday about 15 minutes after takeoff on a parachute training exercise. A doctor at a military

DHAKA: Kelly Parker was thrilled when she landed her dream job in 2012 providing tech support for Harley-Davidson's Tomahawk, Wisconsin, plants. The divorced mother of three hoped it was the beginning of a new career with the motorcycle company. The dream didn't last long. Parker claims