French President Emmanuel Macron is safe following reports of explosions in central Damascus on Tuesday morning, the Elysee Palace has said. Macron is in the capital for talks with his Syrian counterpart Ahmed al-Sharaa at the presidential palace. A security source told the BBC the blasts were caused by two explosive devices and that several…
The Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust – an independent trust which manages the shrine – held its first meeting on Monday after allegations of donation thefts surfaced last month. The trust had earlier denied any wrongdoing. But the state government set up a three-member Special Investigation Team (SIT) to inquire into the allegations. Following…
“I want to say one sentence to President Trump and the world,” declared a grey-haired man named Mojtaba, who came to us saying he had a message. “Soon, very soon you will see signs of revenge at the top of the White House, and soon the colour of the White House will be the colour…
A reservoir wall broke in Nanning in China, sending out a torrent of water after rivers swelled from the passage of a typhoon. At least two people have been killed by flooding due to Typhoon Maysak, while another 480,000 have been evacuated across the southern Guangxi province, officials say. The province’s emergency flood control response…
The campaign targets have been high profile. St Petersburg was hit with drones ahead of Putin’s showpiece economic forum in June. Then there were strikes on Moscow itself, creating explosion videos that went viral. Now there’s a confirmed hit on an oil refinery in Omsk, Siberia, 2,500 km from Ukraine’s border. The drone must have…
A Kenyan court initially suspended the country’s deal after legal challenges demanding protection of patient privacy. Arnold Kavaarpuo, executive director of Ghana’s Data Protection Commission, told the BBC the government in Accra had objected to the deal it was offered for similar reasons. “We had concerns around the scope and breadth of data that was…
The prisons these men helped run are part of a detention system in which the UN’s human rights office (OHCHR) says the torture and ill-treatment of civilians is “systematic and widespread”. It says former detainees describe beatings, electric shocks, mock executions and sexual violence, with civilians often detained arbitrarily and families given little information. The…
But while attendances soar and TV ratings for matches show increased interest on par with the NBA Finals and the World Series of baseball, it’s not yet clear how long it will last. For some analysts, it remains to be seen whether or not this will be a breakthrough moment. “It’s gone from around the…
The film has had an unusually long and difficult journey to release. It was originally titled, external Ghallughara, a Punjabi term associated with some of the darkest episodes in Sikh history. It refers to the mass killings of Sikhs by Mughal forces in 1746 and by the forces of Afghan ruler Ahmad Shah Durrani in…
A former Syrian intelligence chief in the city of Raqqa has been found guilty of torture and sexual abuse of opponents of the former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, at a court in Vienna, Austria. A second Syrian official, the former police chief in Raqqa, was also found guilty of abusing political opponents. The case in…