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Sri Lanka is facing its worst beach pollution crisis as tons of plastic waste from a burning container ship wash ashore, a senior environment official said Saturday. Fishermen have been banned from an 80-kilometer (50-mile) stretch of coast near the Singapore-registered MV X-Press Pearl as an international firefighting operation went …

Four people die in and around protest-hit Cali as talks to end month-long demonstrations remain stalled. Colombian President Ivan Duque has deployed military troops to the western province of Valle del Cauca and its capital, Cali after four people died in protests that marked a month of anti-government demonstrations. The …

Manila lodges diplomatic protest against the ‘incessant and prolonged’ presence of Chinese vessels near Thitu Island. The Philippines has protested China’s “continuing illegal presence and activities” near islands it holds in the South China Sea. In a statement on Saturday, the Philippines’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it had lodged …

Coup leader’s appointment raises the stakes as West African leaders prepare to respond to the coup in Mali. Mali’s constitutional court has named the colonel who led a military coup this week as the country’s new interim leader. The ruling, issued late on Friday, said Assimi Goita would “lead the …

The White House on Friday sent Congress a $6 trillion budget plan that would ramp up spending on infrastructure, education, and combating climate change, arguing it makes good fiscal sense to invest now, when the cost of borrowing is cheap, and reduce deficits later. The first comprehensive budget offered by …

Security Media Cell (SMC) announced the raid of three terrorist hideouts in Kirkuk. Iraqi forces raided three terrorist hideouts in Wadi al-Shay near the village of Albu Fashakah in Kirkuk, which the terrorist gangs use as a safe haven and a launching pad for their criminal operations, noting that the …

Warning sirens were sounded at an American base Friday in Baghdad International Airport, hours after finding missiles close to the area. A security source said that warning sirens were sounded at the US Camp Victoria in Baghdad International Airport, as part of testing. Earlier on Friday, Baghdad Operations Command thwarted …

Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian during clashes in the occupied West Bank on Friday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. A few hundred Palestinians had gathered near Nablus in the northern West Bank to protest Israeli settlements. Israeli soldiers opened fire, killing one man, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. …

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has approved the Covid-19 vaccine made by the US-German partnership Pfizer-BioNTech for children aged 12 to 15, allowing kids in the bloc to be vaccinated against the virus for the first time. New data shows that the ‘Comirnaty’ vaccine is safe for the younger cohort, …

Republicans in the U.S. Senate on Friday derailed a bipartisan inquiry into the deadly assault on the Capitol by former President Donald Trump’s supporters, despite a torrent of criticism they were playing down the violence. Democrats and some moderate Republicans had called for a commission to probe the events leading …

Iraq is building a new oil pier off its southern coast, financed by Japan, that’s expected to boost exports and imports of crude-derived products and increase revenue, officials said Friday. The construction within the port of Khor al-Zubair — Iraq’s main fuel export and import facility — is over 70% …

More than 100 years after the crimes were committed, Germany formally confessed on Friday to having committed genocide as the colonial power in what is now Namibia. After years of negotiations, the German government recognized the atrocities committed against the Herero and Nama ethnic groups as genocide and said reparations …

The eastern DR Congo city of Goma was eerily deserted on Friday after nearly 400,000 of its inhabitants fled following warnings that nearby Mount Nyiragongo volcano may erupt again. The authorities geared for a major humanitarian effort, centered on Sake, around 25 kilometers (15 miles) west of the city, where …

Malaysia is battling a rapidly escalating coronavirus outbreak that has strained the country’s healthcare system. Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin has announced a nationwide “total lockdown” starting in June as coronavirus infections in the country surged to record levels. Muhyiddin said the stricter lockdown from June 1 to 14 was …

Palestinians, legal experts, and activists note a worrying shift in the number of children being arrested as police announce ‘Operation Law and Order’. Thirteen-year-old Mohammed Saadi was kidnapped, blindfolded, beaten, and threatened with a gun to his head by five men in his hometown of Umm al-Fahem. It was May …

Saudi Arabia has acknowledged that it has constructed a military base on an island in the Bab al-Mandab strait to fight the Sana’a-based government. In a Thursday statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency, an official said all equipment currently present on Yemen’s volcanic Mayyun Island is under the control …

President Tayyip Erdogan inaugurated an imposing new mosque in Istanbul on Friday, fulfilling a decades-old goal and stamping a religious identity on the landmark Taksim Square in the heart of Turkey’s largest city. The Taksim mosque and its 30-metre high dome loom symbolically over a monument to the foundation of …

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko flew into Russia on Friday to hold talks with President Vladimir Putin amid an uproar in Europe over the dramatic grounding of a passenger jet in Minsk and the arrest of a dissident blogger. The talks in the Black Sea city of Sochi were organised before …

A man stabbed and badly wounded a policewoman in the town of La Chapelle-Sur-Erdre in western France on Friday, and he later died following a shoot-out with officers, the national gendarmerie force said. The assailant was cornered after a manhunt that involved two police helicopters and more than 200 officers, …

The United Nations refugee agency voiced deep concern on Friday at reports of soldiers taking hundreds of people away from displacement camps in the Tigray region of Ethiopia earlier this week, saying such sites should be a safe haven. Three aid workers and a doctor told Reuters this week that …