World

COX'S BAZAR (BANGLADESH), February 26: Three Nobel Peace Prize winners on Monday urged fellow laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to speak out about violence against the Rohingya minority, warning she otherwise risks prosecution for "genocide". The trio - Tawakkol Karman, Shirin Ebadi and Mairead Maguire - implored the embattled Myanmar leader to "wake up" to the atrocities after visiting squalid camps in Bangladesh home to nearly one million Rohingya refugees. "This is clearly, clearly, clearly genocide that is going on by the Burmese government and military against the Rohingya people,"...

DHAKA/COX'S BAZAAR, JANUARY 16: Bangladesh said on Tuesday it would complete the process of returning within two years many of the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who had fled a conflict in Myanmar, following a meeting of the neighbours. The bilateral repatriation plan, which Myanmar said would begin next Tuesday, was greeted with some skepticism from NGOs, who said it did not adequately address questions of safety, livelihoods and permanent resettlement. A statement by the Bangladesh foreign ministry said the return effort envisages "considering the family as a unit,"...

BEIJING, JANUARY 16: Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday held telephone talks with his US counterpart Donald Trump to resume a suspended dialogue programme aimed at improving bilateral economic ties, amid tensions over their huge trade imbalance. The phone call between the two leaders came as the Trump administration threatened tough action against China including punitive tariffs, sanctions and even a trade war. Tensions have escalated between Beijing and Washington in recent months, with China last Friday reporting a record USD 275.8 billion trade surplus with the US, contrary to...

ISLAMABAD, JANUARY 16: Pakistan's ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif today compared the corruption cases against him to a 'flop' movie as he appeared before an accountability court trying him for graft in the Panama Papers scandal that forced him to resign. The cases were launched on September 8 following the Supreme Court verdict of July 28 that disqualified Sharif as prime minister and ordered the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) for institution of cases against him. Sharif, 68, arrived in the court - his 13th appearance – in Islamabad. He was...

NEW DELHI, JANUARY 16: More than 1,800 Pakistani Muslim clerics have issued an Islamic directive, or fatwa, forbidding suicide bombings, a book due to be unveiled by the government on Tuesday says. The South Asian nation has for years been plagued by violence by Islamist militants who often use suicide bombers and preach that their struggle is a holy war to impose Islamic rule. Suicide attacks are frequently condemned as fanatical and immoral, especially when civilians are killed, but insurgents view the tactic as their most effective weapon. Seeking to...

BRUSSELS, JANUARY 16: The European Union will remove Panama, South Korea and six other countries from its recently unveiled EU tax blacklist at a meeting of finance ministers next week, a European Union official said on Tuesday. “Barring a major surprise, EU finance ministers should remove eight countries from the blacklist of tax havens,” the official said on condition of anonymity. The United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, Mongolia, Macau, Grenada and Barbados are also to be struck from the list. The reversal comes just a few weeks after the EU announced...