Shimla / AFP An overcrowded minibus fell into a deep gorge in India’s northern Himalayan region after a portion of the road caved in, killing 14 people, an official said on Sunday. Another 41 people were injured when the bus heading towards the popular tourist destination of Kinnaur rolled into the steep valley in Mandi district of Himachal Pradesh ...

  Kabul / AFP Six Afghan Taliban inmates on death row were hanged on Sunday, government sources said, in the first set of executions endorsed by President Ashraf Ghani since he came to power in 2014. Ghani last month vowed a new hardline stance against the Taliban after an insurgent attack killed 64 people in Kabul, in what appeared to ...

  Jerusalem / AFP Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday criticised the deputy head of Israel’s armed forces for remarks appearing to compare contemporary Israeli society to Nazi Germany. “The comparison drawn in the words of the deputy chief of staff regarding events which characterised Nazi Germany 80 years ago is outrageous,” said Netanyahu. “They do injustice to Israeli society ...

  Beersheba / AFP Israeli Arab Muslim leader Raed Salah started a nine-month prison sentence on Sunday for fomenting riots at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque. Salah was accompanied by about 100 well-wishers, including Israeli Arab lawmakers, as he arrived at the prison in the city of Beersheba in southern Israel’s Negev desert, an AFP journalist said. At a farewell rally earlier ...

  Jakarta / AFP A group of Indonesian “cyber warriors” sit glued to screens, as they send out messages promoting a moderate form of Islam in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country. Armed with laptops and smartphones, some 500 members of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU)— one of the world’s biggest Muslim organisations—are seeking to counter the Islamic State group’s extremist ...

  The Internal Revenue Service has just released its latest estimate of the “tax gap” – the difference between what Americans pay in taxes and what they actually owe. For the years 2008 to 2010 (the IRS’s latest data), the annual gap averaged a huge $458 billion. It’s surely higher now. Gulp. If everyone religiously paid every penny owed, budget ...

  Jean-Michel Paul For those feeling sympathy for the European Central Bank, which has pretty much been on its own in trying to stimulate demand in the absence of government fiscal policy and investment, a ray of hope emerged. In Korea. South Korea is not doing badly, mind you. The country is a member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation ...

  An apparent environmental disaster off Vietnam’s central coastal region, estimated by some as one of the country’s worst ever toxic spills, represents newly appointed Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc’s first big political test. How Phuc strikes a balance between foreign investor interests and local community rights in handling the case will set an early precedent for his government’s policy ...

  Bloomberg Singapore’s biggest banks are in talks about setting up a system for sharing information on prospective clients, in an effort to combat money laundering in the city-state. DBS Group Holdings Ltd., Oversea-Chinese Bank Corp. and United Overseas Bank Ltd. are exploring the possibility of a countrywide model for anti-money laundering and enhanced client knowledge, according to Loretta Yuen, ...

  Reuters New Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) Governor Ahmed al-Kholifey said his main priority is to maintain monetary stability and support the government’s Vision 2030 economic reforms, Al Sharq Al Awsat newspaper reported on Sunday. Kholifey was appointed on Saturday in succession to Fahd al-Mubarak. Saudi Arabia’s King Salman on Saturday appointed Ahmed al-Kholifey Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority Governor, ...