Disgraced former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Khan has filed a USD 1 million countersuit against a hotel maid who accused him of sexual assault, citing that her allegations a year ago had cost him a shot at running for French presidency. A year after the scandal broke out, the former socialist presidential frontrunner accused the maid, [...]
Australia has been ranked as the seventh top polluter mainly due to carbon emissions, a report said. Conservation group World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in its report said the spiralling global population and over-consumption are threatening the future health of the planet, ABC news reported. WWF released this year’s Living Planet Report, which has estimated humans [...]
The bodies of 13 Indian pilgrims who died in a plane crash in northern Nepal will be handed over to their relatives today after the process of postmortem is completed. The bodies were airlifted to Kathmandu yesterday, according to Agni Air staff. The Indians were among 15 persons who were killed when a small plane [...]
A week after US President Barack Obama voiced his support for same-sex marriage, American weekly news magazine Newsweek has heralded him as “the first gay president” in its cover story. The magazine’s cover features Obama with a rainbow- coloured halo over his head and the headline ‘The First Gay President’. The cover story is by [...]
The US today urged all people concerned to protect the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, in view of allegations of a Chinese plot to assassinate him. “We would call on all to protect him and protect what he stands for,” State Department spokesperson, Victoria Nuland, said. She was responding to a question on the [...]
A strong earthquake measuring 6.2 shook an area near the border between Chile and Peru early today, US government researchers said. The reading was based on the open-ended Moment Magnitude scale used by US seismologists, which measures the area of the fault that ruptured and the total energy released. The epicentre of the tremor, which [...]
Thirteen Indian pilgrims were among 15 people killed when a private plane crashed in northern Nepal today after hitting a hill top while trying to land at high-altitude Jomsom airport. The Dornier aircraft belonging to the Agni Air went down when it hit the top of a hill while landing at the Jomsom airport in northern [...]
Turkish commandos have arrested 14 pirates thought to be from Somalia off the coast of Oman and freed seven Yemeni sailors they were holding hostage, the army said . A helicopter of the frigate Giresun, which operates with NATO forces in the region, spotted the boat Friday around 190 nautical miles from the Omani coast, [...]
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has suffered its worst defeat in the state of North Rhine Westphalia in a mid-term election, a week after it lost control of the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein. The CDU, which is in the opposition in the largest German state of North Rhine Westphalia, lost its position [...]
Former US President Bill Clinton dubbed Barack Obama “incompetent” and pressed wife Hillary to quit her job as secretary of state to challenge the incumbent President in the primaries, a new book has claimed. “The country needs you!” the former president had told Hillary Clinton, urging her to run this year, according to accounts of [...]
