DHAKA: Sectarian tension between Shia and Sunni Muslims is probably the most serious threat to world security, according to Iran’s foreign minister.Speaking to the BBC, Mohamed Javad Zarif blamed some Sunni countries for what he called ‘fear-mongering’.‘Some people have fanned the

DHAKA: Nations launched a new round of talks on Monday for a 2015 deal to cut Earth-warming greenhouse gas emissions in the aftermath of a deadly Philippines typhoon the UN`s climate chief labelled ‘sobering’.The 12-day United Nations talks opened amid a slew of warnings about

DHAKA: One of the most senior leaders of the Haqqani militant network has been shot dead near the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, reports say.Nasiruddin Haqqani, who was in his early 30s, was the group’s financier and a son of its founder Jalaluddin.Reports say his body has been taken for

DHAKA: India’s Mars spacecraft suffered a brief engine failure Monday as scientists tried to move it into a higher orbit around Earth, but controllers denied any setback to the ambitious low-cost mission.The Mars Orbiter Mission, which blasted off on November 5 for an 11-month trip to

DHAKA: Indian foreign minister Salman Khurshid is optimistic about future relations with fellow Asian power China, with Delhi viewing Beijing as ‘rivals who are also partners’.But in an interview with The Australian newspaper published on Monday, Khurshid said a festering Himalayan

DHAKA: The United States, Australia and the United Nations are mobilising emergency aid to the Philippines as the scale of the devastation unleashed by super typhoon Haiyan emerges.The Pentagon is sending military personnel and equipment to assist with the relief effort following the

DHAKA: The head of the United Nations atomic energy agency, Yukiya Amano, said he hoped to finalise a technical agreement with Iran during a trip to Tehran on Monday.Iranian media reported, says The Jerusalem Post.‘I hope that today we can have a joint statement based on understandings

DHAKA: US state secretary John Kerry said on Monday Washington was ‘not (in) a race’ to complete talks with Iran on its nuclear programme.Speaking at a news conference with United Arab Emirates foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahayan in Abu Dhabi, Kerry said Washington

DHAKA: Japan switched on the first turbine at a wind farm 20km off the coast of Fukushima on Monday, feeding electricity to the grid tethered to the tsunami-crippled nuclear plant onshore.The wind farm near the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant is to eventually have a generation

DHAKA: Syria’s main opposition alliance says it will attend planned peace talks, if a number of conditions are met.After a vote early on Monday, the National Coalition reiterated that president Bashar al-Assad would ‘have no role in the transitional period’, reports the BBC.It also

DHAKA: Education officials in Pakistan have banned the memoir of Malala Yousafzai, the teenager shot by the Taliban, from 40,000 schools as she `represents the West`.Adeeb Javedani, president of the All Pakistan Private Schools Management Association, said his group had banned the book

DHAKA: Four people have died and eight others injured after a seven-storey building caught fire in Vikhroli, a Mumbai suburb. The fire, according to officials, was noticed around 3 am and could have started in the electric meter cable box and spread through the network of cables from

DHAKA: The European Space Agency`s (Esa) Goce satellite has re-entered the Earth`s atmosphere, burning up in the process.Early estimates suggested any surviving debris could have fallen somewhere along a path through East Asia and the Western Pacific to Antarctica.Dubbed the "Ferrari of

DHAKA: An unidentified gunman has shot and killed Iran`s deputy industries minister, according to state news agency IRNA.Safdar Rahmatabadi, who was also the minister for mines and trade, was shot twice in his head and chest on Sunday in an eastern neighbourhood of Tehran, IRNA

DHAKA: Typhoon Haiyan has made landfall in Vietnam, days after leaving thousands feared dead and widespread devastation in the Philippines, meteorologists confirm.The Vietnamese national weather forecast agency said Haiyan made landfall in northern province of Quang Ninh at 5:00am local

DHAKA: A Twitter account Iran experts believe is run by the office of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei criticised France on Sunday after Paris expressed reservations about a proposed deal to end a decade-old dispute over Tehran`s nuclear programme.A message posted in English on the

DHAKA: Palestine president Mahmoud Abbas met with Egypt’s intelligence chief Mohamed al-Tohami on Saturday in Cairo.Palestinian news agency WAFA reported, The Jerusalem Post publishes this report on Sunday.Abbas and Tohami discussed the situation in the Palestinian territories, Israeli

DHAKA: A Russian opposition group says its activists have thrown tomatoes at Dutch King Willem-Alexander and his wife, Queen Maxima, as they arrived for a concert in Moscow.Eduard Limonov, the leader of the banned National Bolshevik party, said two of its activists hurled tomatoes at the

DHAKA: Syria’s opposition is edging towards agreeing to international peace talks in Geneva but wants approval from fighters inside the country first to give the process more legitimacy.Sources at talks in Istanbul said late November 9, Turkish daily Hurriyet publishes this report on

DHAKA: Officials say they have banned teenage education activist Malala Yousafzai’s book from private schools across Pakistan, calling her a tool of the West.Malala attracted global attention last year when the Taleban shot her in the head in north-west Pakistan for criticising the