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Bloomberg Cold War foes Russia and Pakistan are set to hold their first joint military drills on land, a sign that neighbouring Afghanistan may avoid becoming the site of another proxy war between global powers. Russian President Vladimir Putin, in need of cash, is seeking to shift away from his country’s decades-old relationship with India—which is also buying more weapons ...

Istanbul / AFP Two suspected people smugglers went on trial in Turkey on Thursday charged with causing the death in September of a Syrian toddler the picture of whose lifeless body washed up on a Turkish beach shocked the world. The trial of Syrian nationals Muwafaka Alabash and Asem Alfrhad opened at the criminal court in the western Turkish resort ...

Bloomberg USA policy toward Syria was driven by President Barack Obama’s fear of getting entangled in another middle eastern country, outgoing French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in an interview with RTL Radio. USA decision not to punish Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad for using chemical weapons in 2013 was read by Russian President Vladimir Putin as a sign that he ...

Bloomberg North Korea said it was expelling South Koreans from a jointly run industrial park and severing a military hotline between the two countries, a day after the government in Seoul announced its withdrawal from the site to punish Kim Jong un for his recent nuclear test and long-range rocket launch. The North Korea army is taking control of the ...

Bloomberg South Korea plans to cut off power and water to a joint factory park in North Korea to punish Kim Jong Un for his recent nuclear test and rocket launch, said a government official with knowledge of the matter, shuttering the last avenue for economic cooperation between the countries. The government in Seoul hopes to have withdrawn its nationals ...

Washington / AFP In a landmark discovery for physics and astronomy, scientists said on Thursday they have glimpsed the first direct evidence of gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space-time that Albert Einstein predicted a century ago. When two black holes collided some 1.3 billion years ago, the joining of those two great masses sent forth a wobble that ...

NEW DELHI / WAM The United Arab Emirates and the Republic of India exchanged a number of cooperation agreements and memorandums of understanding in a number of areas. The exchange ceremonies were witnessed by His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, and His Excellency ...

NEW DELHI His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, has also met with the Indian Vice President Mohammed Hamid Ansari, where he discussed friendly ties and cooperation between the UAE and India as well as ways to promote them in order to achieve common ...

Munich / AFP Russia said on Thursday it was ready to discuss a ceasefire in Syria as foreign ministers gathered in Munich in a bid to kick-start peace talks derailed by the regime onslaught on the besieged city of Aleppo. Tens of thousands of Syrians have fled to the Turkish border as government forces, backed by Russian bombers and Iranian ...

Rome / Bloomberg Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has compared Europe’s recent economic policies to administering drugs to artificially prolong the life of a terminally ill patient. A regular critic of the European Union’s budget deficit rules, Renzi said in an open letter published by La Repubblica on Thursday that austerity economics had resulted in Europe being left behind by ...