The arrests of a dozen people in Nepal accused of smuggling young men into Russia’s army has shed a spotlight on fighters from the poor Asian country. Earlier this week, Nepal asked Russia to return Nepali mercenaries after six of them died in fighting in Ukraine. The smugglers allegedly charged each man up to $9,000 […]
Palestinians are mourning the death of well-known writer and literary scholar Refaat Alareer, who was killed in an air strike in Gaza City on Wednesday. Alareer’s father-in-law said he had died along with his brother and sister and four of her children. He had taught literature at Gaza’s Islamic University, which was destroyed by Israeli […]
An Australian man has died after being buried in sand on a beach, authorities say. Josh Taylor was at a beach campground on Queensland’s Bribie Island on Saturday when he fell into a hole that had been reportedly dug to roast a pig. Mr Taylor, 23, was airlifted to hospital shortly after the incident but […]
Long before climate change became a buzzword, an Indian woman was fighting the odds to make devices that would help people understand the environment better. But Anna Mani – one of the world’s most prominent weather scientists – remains an unfamiliar figure to many in her home country. Born in 1918 in Travancore, a former […]
Activists say up to 600 North Korean defectors, believed to be mostly women, have not been heard from since their deportation from China. In October, China carried out the largest repatriation of North Korean detainees in years, after Pyongyang ended its Covid border lockdown. This put the detainees’ lives at risk, human rights groups said […]
Federal prosecutors have filed tax charges against Hunter Biden, a second criminal case against the US president’s son. The nine-count indictment says he schemed to evade at least $1.4m (£1.1m) in federal taxes from 2016-19. The three felonies and six misdemeanours include failure to file and pay taxes, false tax return and evasion of assessment. […]
India’s ambassador to Qatar has met eight former naval officers who have been sentenced to death in Qatar on unspecified charges. An Indian foreign ministry spokesperson said that the diplomat met the men in prison on 3 December. He added that a court in Qatar has held two hearings on an appeal filed by India against the […]
Yael Noy doesn’t wear military fatigues, but she describes herself as being in battle right now, after the Hamas assault on 7 October. “I’m fighting to be good,” she tells me. “I’m fighting to stay moral when both sides are in such terrible pain. I’m fighting to be the same person I was before.” Yael […]
The Israel-Gaza war is “taking away the focus” from the conflict in Ukraine, the country’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has admitted. He said this was “one of the goals” of Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. And he denied that fighting in Ukraine had reached a stalemate, despite a recent assessment […]
