International News

Russia suspends $3 bn debt claim against Ukraine

  • MOSCOW, (APP/AFP): Russia said Friday it had temporarily suspended its demand for full repayment of a disputed $3-billion loan to Ukraine, saying it wanted to give the new government in Kiev time to “assess the situation”. “We have given the new Ukrainian government an extension to assess the situation with a clear head, to reevaluate […]

  • Former Thai PM Banharn Silpa-archa dies at 83

    BANGKOK, (APP/AFP): Veteran Thai politician and former premier Banharn Silpa-archa died Saturday at the age of 83, a Bangkok hospital said. “Banharn Silpa-archa passed away peacefully,” said a statement from Siriraj hospital, where he was admitted with asthma on Thursday. Born to a Chinese family in central Suphan Buri province in 1932, Banharn was first […]

  • Obama wades in to UK’s Brexit debate

    LONDON, (APP/AFP) – US President Barack Obama plunged into Britain’s poisonous European Union membership debate Friday, arguing strongly against a “Brexit” as he kicked off a visit to the UK. Obama’s intervention ahead of the June 23 vote in a piece for the Daily Telegraph newspaper drew a furious response from eurosceptics like London Mayor […]

  • A year on, millions of Nepal quake survivors wait for aid

    KATHMANDU, (APP/AFP) – A year after an earthquake flattened her home in Nepal, Menuka Rokaya still lives in a tent with her husband and nine-month-old baby as they await even a sliver of a $4 billion aid fund. “We have lived like this with a baby through monsoon and winter,” says Rokaya, one of an […]

  • Magnitude 6.0 aftershock strikes near Ecuador coast: USGS

    QUITO, (APP/AFP): A magnitude 6.0 aftershock struck near the coast of Ecuador Thursday, as the country struggled to recover from a devastating quake that killed almost 600 people, US experts said. The tremor hit at 10:03 pm (0303 GMT Friday) some 20 miles (33 kilometers) north-northwest of Bahia de Caraquez and 36 miles north-northwest of […]

  • Fossilised tooth of gigantic ‘killer’ whale found in Australia

    SYDNEY, (APP/AFP): A huge, five-million-year-old whale tooth has been discovered on an Australian beach, providing the first evidence of the now extinct killer sperm whale outside the Americas. The 30-centimetre-long (12-inch) fossilised tooth, which is larger than that of a Tyrannosaurus rex, was found by a fossil enthusiast at Beaumaris Bay near Melbourne in February. […]