DHAKA: France on Monday arrested 45 people in a vast sweep against international arms traffickers.French police said, reports The Straits Times.In a statement, police said some 300 officers had been involved in the operation, which focused on hundreds of military-grade arms, pieces of

DHAKA: China’s envoy to the Philippines says her country has a sovereign right to establish a maritime air defence zone over the East China Sea and replicate it over another disputed region.Chinese ambassador Ma Keqing defended Beijing’s decision to establish the Air Defense

DHAKA: Beijing on Monday dismissed as ‘groundless’ allegations that a Canadian naval engineer is a Chinese spy.Qing Quentin Huang, 53, was charged at the weekend under Canada’s Security of Information Act with two counts of attempting to communicate classified information to a

DHAKA: Britain’s new envoy to Tehran visits Iran Tuesday for the first time since a thaw in relations between the two countries who severed ties two years ago, his Iranian counterpart said Monday.Hassan Habibollah-Zadeh told the official IRNA news agency that following that visit he

DHAKA: US vice president Joe Biden will seek a delicate balance between calming military tensions with China and backing ally Japan against Beijing on a trip to Asia this week that is being overshadowed by a territorial row in the East China Sea.Japan reiterated on Monday that Tokyo and

DHAKA: Former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden said that Iran is ‘far too close’ to obtaining an atomic weapon and the international community must now push back the threshold of a possible weaponised nuclear Iran.In an interview with ‘Fox News Sunday’, the retired US general

DHAKA: Police have raised the death toll to nine in the police helicopter crash at a pub in Scotland.Officials said on Monday that another body had been found in the wreckage of The Clutha pub in Glasgow, where the helicopter crashed on Friday night.Police have warned that more bodies may

DHAKA: The Palestinian ambassador to Iran Salah Zawawi called on Monday for the strengthening of bilateral cultural relations between Tehran and the Palestinians.Iranian IRNA news agency reported, says The Jerusalem Post.Zawawi made the remarks during a meeting with the Head of the

DHAKA: At least 10 people were killed on Monday when a passenger bus plunged into a ravine in Pakistan’s Kashmir region, close to the disputed border with India.The bus travelling from the garrison city of Rawalpindi to the frontier town of Forward Kahuta, fell down the 150m slope early

DHAKA: A Saudi diplomat posted in Sri Lanka was found dead in a swimming pool in the capital Colombo.The local police however said preliminary investigations did not suspect foul play in the death of Hussain Mohsin Al Haj who had been posted in Colombo since 2011.Saudi news site Sabq said

DHAKA: About 1,000 protesters blocked off the Ukrainian government’s main headquarters on Monday and surrounding streets, preventing employees getting to work, in further protests at Kiev’s policy U-turn away from integration with Europe.In response to an opposition call for a

DHAKA: Iran: Iranian state television is reporting that the number of HIV-positive citizens in the country has skyrocketed over the last decade.On Sunday, state television quoted health minister Hassan Ghzaizadeh as saying there has been a nine-fold growth in the number of HIV/AIDS

DHAKA: Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif appealed Monday to Saudi Arabia to work together with his government toward achieving regional ‘stability’, in remarks to media during a visit to Oman.‘I believe that our relations with Saudi Arabia should expand as we consider

DHAKA: Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra said on Monday she would ‘open every door’ to find a peaceful solution to the current political crisis, as thousands of protesters took to the streets of the capital seeking to topple her government.She told a news conference that police

DHAKA: At least seven people have died and two are badly injured after fire swept through a Chinese-owned clothing factory in the Italian town of Prato.The blaze broke out in a loft where 11 people were sleeping, causing part of the roof to collapse, fire officials said.The cause of the

DHAKA: A majority of Croatians voted in a referendum on Sunday to ban gay marriages in what is a major victory for the Catholic Church-backed conservatives in the European Union`s newest nation.The state electoral commission, citing initial results, said 65 percent of those who voted

DHAKA: A suicide attacker rammed an explosives-laden truck into a police base near Kabul on Monday, killing four officers and wounding 17 other people including a local police chief.Afghan officials said, reports The Straits Times.The Taliban, the main Islamist militant group behind

DHAKA: China launched its first ever extraterrestrial landing craft into orbit en route for the moon in the early hours of Monday, in a major milestone for its space programme.‘The probe has already entered the designated orbit,’ the official Xinhua news agency quoted Zhang Zhenzhong,

DHAKA: Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi called on World Aids Day for an end to discrimination against those living with the disease as experts warned against complacency in fighting the global scourge.Speaking as the UNAids global advocate for people living with HIV/Aids, Suu Kyi drew

DHAKA: The United Nations closed its main office in Bangkok, dozens of schools closed and many civil servants stayed away from work on Monday as the Thai capital braced for more violence in a spiraling political crisis.After a weekend of chaos in pockets of Bangkok, protesters vowed to