DHAKA: Sri Lanka has suspended final approval for two casinos involving a total investment of around a billion dollars after protests from within the ruling coalition’s ranks.A Bill giving the two separate casino hotels the go-ahead and granting them a 10-year tax holiday was due to be

DHAKA: Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief has said the kingdom will make a ‘major shift’ in dealings with the United States in protest at its perceived inaction over the Syria war and its overtures to Iran.A source close to Saudi policy said on Tuesday, reports The Straits

DHAKA: Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate and long-time political prisoner, has finally collected the European Union’s 1990 Sakharov Prize for human rights.In Tuesday’s stirring ceremony, European Parliament president Martin Schulz said that ‘23 years later, we

DHAKA: An Egyptian prosecutor on Tuesday ordered the arrest of four police officers accused of killing 38 members of the Muslim Brotherhood during their detention last August.Egypt security sources and state media said, reports The Straits Times.The Islamists suffocated after teargas was

DHAKA: A generation ago, Dr Akira Sugenoya performed lifesaving cancer surgery on more than 100 children after the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.Today, as mayor of a central Japanese city, he’s trying to avoid a repeat of his own history.Beginning in April, parents living in the shadow of

DHAKA: European Union governments agreed on Tuesday to hold a new round of accession talks with Turkey on November 5 after Germany dropped its opposition voiced after Ankara’s crackdown on anti-government protests earlier this year.The launch of a new ‘chapter’ of negotiations with

DHAKA: Oman will look after Iranian affairs in Canada after diplomatic relations were suspended last year, Iran said on Tuesday, part of efforts by Tehran to improve ties with the West under president Hassan Rouhani.Canada closed its embassy in Tehran and expelled Iranian diplomats in

DHAKA: Spanish judges have ordered the release of a convicted Basque militant, after the European Court of Human Rights ruled against her continued detention.Ines del Rio, of the separatist group Eta, has been serving a 30-year sentence for bomb attacks in the 1980s.The High Court backed

DHAKA: Amnesty International called on the US to investigate reports of civilians killed and wounded by CIA drone strikes in Pakistan in a report released on Tuesday that provided new details about the alleged victims of the attacks, including a 68-year-old grandmother hit while farming

DHAKA: Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev says Moscow has signed an US$85 billion deal to supply oil to China.Medvedev said in an online discussion with Chinese Internet users that Russia’s biggest oil producer, Rosneft, would supply 70 million barrels of crude a year for 10

DHAKA: Italian prime minister Enrico Letta on Tuesday urged an EU summit this week to adopt an action plan to deal with the ‘immigration emergency’ after two shipwrecks that killed over 400 people.Europe ‘cannot sit there and watch’ these tragedies, Letta told the Italian

DHAKA: The recent shutdown of the US government has taken a stinging toll on the image of the Republican Party, according to a poll published on Tuesday.The Washington Post-ABC News survey showed the public’s opinion of the party has sunk to an all-time low, with nearly two-thirds

DHAKA: US state secretary John Kerry said it was hard to see how Iran could play a constructive role in planned peace talks in Geneva without backing plans for a transitional government in Syria.Speaking in Paris after talks with Qatari foreign minister Khaled al-Attiyah, Kerry said Iran

DHAKA: Syrian president Bashar al-Assad said there was no date set for a long-delayed international conference aimed at ending the country`s civil war.‘There is no date so far ... And current factors do not help in holding it,’ Assad told Al Mayadeen television, reports The Jerusalem

DHAKA: Arab and Western foreign ministers are to meet Syrian opposition officials in London in an effort to persuade them to attend planned peace talks.A key group in Syria`s main opposition alliance is threatening to boycott the talks, expected next month in Geneva.The Syrian National

DHAKA: US drone strikes killed a Pakistani grandmother and 18 civilian labourers last year, Amnesty International said on Tuesday, shedding new light on a major source of tension in US-Pakistani relations.Islamabad publicly opposes drone attacks, saying they kill too many civilians in

DHAKA: A Chinese court said it will announce its verdict on an appeal filed by fallen politician Bo Xilai on Friday. Bo who is a former member of the Communist Party`s political bureau was recently given life imprisonment for corruption and embezzlement.Bo has challenged the verdict

DHAKA: Some 78 people have been killed and scores wounded in an attack on villages in South Sudan`s Jonglei state, the local MP has told the BBC.The attackers were believed to be members of David Yau Yau`s rebel group, said MP Deng Dau.Jonglei is badly affected by ethnic rivalries and

DHAKA: American spies secretly listened in to 70.3 million private phone calls in France over less than one month, it emerged today.The astonishing figure gives an indication of just how easy it is for the US to monitor people’s activities across Europe and has caused outrage in

DHAKA: New Jersey`s first-ever same-sex marriages were celebrated Monday with cheers and laughter as a flurry of excited, beaming couples married minutes after midnight.Republican Governor Chris Christie, who had appealed against the judicial decision to allow the weddings, later that