COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — A Sri Lankan court issued an order on Monday temporarily preventing the disputed prime minister from holding office, the latest twist in a political crisis that has paralyzed the island nation. The Court of Appeal ordered Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and his cabinet to appear on Dec. 12 and to explain on what authority they hold… Read more »
JAKARTA, Indonesia — Gunmen in the remote Indonesian province of Papua have killed as many as 31 construction workers who were brought from a distant island to help build a major highway, officials said Tuesday. The police attributed the attacks to separatists who have long pushed for an independent Papua, The Associated Press reported. But there were few details of… Read more »
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan government is investigating allegations that players on the women’s national soccer team were sexually and physically abused by male coaches and officials, including the head of the Afghan soccer federation, officials said on Tuesday. President Ashraf Ghani said in a closed-door speech to the Afghanistan National Olympic Committee on Monday that he had ordered the… Read more »
The head of the company that feeds American troops in Afghanistan has been charged in federal court with violating sanctions against trade with Iran, along with other offenses. The federal indictment charged Abul Huda Farouki, 75, a Jordanian-American and wealthy philanthropist from Virginia with longstanding ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, with conspiracy to commit money laundering, violating sanctions against… Read more »
A police officer in northern India was killed trying to calm a mob angered by reports that cows, regarded by Hindus as holy, had been slaughtered in the area. BBC Hindi’s Nitin Srivastava reports from Bulandshahr in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where the incident happened. It was sometime after 10:00 local time (04:30 GMT) on Monday when Inspector Subodh… Read more »
One of the Taliban’s most senior commanders has been killed in a US airstrike in Afghanistan. Mullah Abdul Manan Akhund was the Taliban’s “governor” and military chief for the southern Helmand province. He was killed in the Nawzad district of Helmand on Saturday night, provincial officials said. The Taliban said his death was a “major loss” but it would not… Read more »
In post-Taliban Afghanistan, the women’s football team was hailed globally as a symbol of the new freedoms enjoyed by the country’s women. But now one of Afghanistan’s top sports officials has admitted that female footballers – who defied hard-liners and militants by daring to take to the field in the first place – have been sexually abused. And it’s not… Read more »
India’s heaviest satellite has gone into orbit on a French rocket to help boost broadband internet services. Weighing about 5,854kg (12,906lb), the GSAT-11 is India’s “most-advanced” multi-band communication satellite. The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) launched the satellite from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana early on Wednesday morning. It will be placed in a geostationary orbit by the end… Read more »
While polio is eradicated in most first-world countries it still threatens the population of developing countries, including Pakistan. The virus is highly contagious and infects large numbers of the countries population. The vaccines that helped eradicate the disease in many areas of the world cannot do the same in these countries. Oral vaccinations include injecting the weakened, but live, polio… Read more »
In a continuous thread of news from India, this week had two stories, strangely similar, yet very different. It’s about infrastructure. This growing world power has the population to thrive and the means to do so, yet how the government chooses to spend its money is incredibly interesting considering the rate of poverty. Recently the government has declared the construction… Read more »