DHAKA: Syria’s defence ministry spokesman said Syrian chemical weapons arsenal is under strict guard.RIA news agency reports, according to The Voice of Russia.Syrian army takes necessary measures to ensure safety of UN and OPCW inspectors, said the defence ministry spokesman.BDST: 2015

DHAKA: After a long court battle, Palestinian farmers have reclaimed land they lost to an Israeli settlement in the 1970s.Israel dismantled Homesh and three other West Bank settlements in 2005, in connection with a wider withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, but refused to let the original

DHAKA: The man said to be responsible for bringing Al-Qaeda to Afghanistan announced he was running for president on Thursday, a move likely to be greeted with apprehension by the international community.Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai is barred from running by the constitution, and

DHAKA: The Belarusian president has lashed out against president Barack Obama, drawing a comparison between American exceptionalism and Nazism.Alexander Lukashenko told the Kazakh TV station 24.kz that Belarus had ‘already survived this ‘exceptionalism’... which cost us 50 million

DHAKA: French lawmakers on Thursday approved a bill that will prevent Amazon from offering free deliveries of discounted books.The bill, designed to support small bookstores struggling in the face of giant online retailers, was backed unanimously in the lower house National Assembly,

DHAKA: The Egyptian army has planned military attacks on specific targets in the Gaza Strip in the event that the security situation in the northern Sinai peninsula deteriorates.A senior Egyptian security official told the Ma’an news agency, reports The Jerusalem Post.The source said

DHAKA: An estimated 500 passengers on a boat that sank off the Sicilian island of Lampedusa on Thursday were all believed to be Eritreans coming from Libya.The UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration said, reports The Straits Times.The boat

DHAKA: Russian president Vladimir Putin and US president Barack Obama may discuss the Syria crisis on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit next week in Bali.A Kremlin aide said on Thursday, reports Turkish daily Hurriyet.‘It would be rather logical to meet (Obama) in Bali, taking

DHAKA: A Saudi court has sentenced four men to up to 10 years in prison and 2,000 lashes for dancing ‘naked’ in public.Media reported on Thursday, says The Straits Times.In a video posted on YouTube, several men appear dancing atop a vehicle in the ultra-conservative province of

DHAKA: An Indian court sentenced a powerful ally of the ruling Congress party to five years in jail on Thursday for siphoning off state funds, underlining that public disgust with corruption is finally catching up with the nation’s politicians.Arvind Singh, joint secretary of the bar

DHAKA: A young Saudi couple divorced after the husband and wife argued over the name of their first baby.The couple, married for two years, could not agree what to name their newborn daughter with the husband insisting on naming her after his mother and the wife arguing that she should

DHAKA: Six of the most powerful rebel factions in Syria issued a joint statement on Thursday telling an Al-Qaeda front group to withdraw from the northern town of Azaz bordering Turkey.In a separate statement, rebels in central Syria also called on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

DHAKA: United States and Japanese officials said on Thursday they will position a second early-warning radar in Japan within the next year and deploy new long-range surveillance drones to help monitor disputed islands in the East China Sea by next spring, moves that may well raise

DHAKA: Chinese president Xi Jinping showed no sign of bending to South-east Asian pressure to resolve increasingly irascible territorial disputes over the South China Sea on Thursday, simply repeating past calls for dialogue.Xi, in the first address by a foreign leader to Indonesian MPs,

DHAKA: At least 80 migrants have drowned and rescuers were trying to save about 250 people still missing near the Italian island of Lampedusa after a migrant boat caught fire and sank, Italian media reports said. The accident occurred on Thursday morning, reports Al Jazeera.Rescuers

DHAKA: The United States and Japan said on Thursday Tokyo would pay a third of the cost of Washington pulling thousands of Marines out of Japan as it reduces its heavy military presence on Okinawa.US state secretary John Kerry, defence secretary Chuck Hagel, Japan’s foreign minister

DHAKA: In a bid to bolster moderate forces in Syria against Islamic rebel factions, the CIA has reportedly been expanding a covert program to train US-backed opposition fighters in the embattled country.The Washington Post on Thursday cited US officials as saying., reports The Jerusalem

DHAKA: The leader of Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn party was jailed pending trial on charges of belonging to a criminal group.A court official told media early on Thursday, reports The Jerusalem Post.Golden Dawn leader Nikolaos Mihaloliakos appeared before investigating magistrates and

DHAKA: US state secretary John Kerry said on Thursday that the United States hopes to engage with the new Iranian administration, but that any advances must be based on concrete steps by Tehran to give up its nuclear weapons programme.If Iran intends to be peaceful, ‘I believe there is

DHAKA: Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has a new leak of radioactive water which may have entered the Pacific Ocean, its operator says.Workers discovered water overflowing from one of the storage tanks late on Wednesday, plant operator Tepco said.It estimates that 430 litres of