International

Khashoggi assassination 'premeditated’: Saudi Arabia

  

PNS Desk: Journalist Jamal Khashoggi's murder was "premeditated", Saudi Arabia's public prosecutor has been quoted as saying by Saudi state media.The evidence for this came from a joint Saudi-Turkish task force, broadcaster al-Ekhbariya said.It also reported that prosecutors were questioning suspects as a result of the joint investigation.Saudi Arabia had initially denied all knowledge of the writer's whereabouts when he went missing on 2 October.The kingdom has since...

Landslide kills 31 in eastern Uganda

  

PNS Desk: At least 31 people have been killed when a landslide rolled down the slopes of Mount Elgon in eastern Uganda, wrecking homes and burying animals.Martin Owor, Commissioner for Disaster Preparedness and Management, said the landslide tumbled onto a small town on the mountain's slopes on Thursday afternoon."Most of the people were caught at the trading centre, the landslide pushed huge boulders into a river which burst its banks and the water swept away the people," Owor...

Rohingya family makes rare return to Myanmar from Bangladesh

  

PNS Desk: A Rohingya family of five has returned to Myanmar from Bangladesh, sources said Thursday, a rare development while a large-scale repatriation deal remains stalled.More than 720,000 of Myanmar's stateless Muslim minority fled a brutal military crackdown in August last year, taking shelter in crowded camps in Bangladesh.There they recounted tales of rape, murder and arson as villages in Rakhine state were burned to the ground.United Nations investigators have said senior...

Severe cyclone hits eastern Indian coast; 8 killed

  

PNS Desk: A severe cyclone damaged homes and blew down trees and power poles Thursday in eastern India, where eight people were killed and about 300,000 forced to move to higher ground. Cyclone Titli, or Butterfly, had winds blowing up to 150 kilometers per hour (95 mph) when it came onshore, the India Meteorological Department said. It spread rain widely in coastal districts of Orissa state and also hit northern parts of neighboring Andhra Pradesh state. Eight people died from...

UN Nikki Haley resigns, Trump accepts

  

PNS Desk: Nikki Haley has resigned as the US ambassador to the United Nations, and will leave her post at the end of the year, in a move that stunned allied diplomats and other senior officials.Haley and Donald Trump announced her departure in the Oval Office. The timing came as a surprise to her colleagues at the state department and at the UN security council.The secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and the national security adviser, John Bolton, are reported to have been taken...

Action must be accelerated to address climate change: UN expert

  

PNS Desk: A United Nations (UN) expert has said States must accelerate action to address climate change - from solar electricity to climate-friendly agriculture practices - or risk locking in decades of grave human rights violations.In a statement following the release of a new scientific report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), David R. Boyd, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, said climate change rated as one of the greatest threats...

Nobel economics prize awarded to Nordhaus, Romer

  

PNS Desk: US economists William Nordhaus and Paul Romer on Monday shared the 2018 Nobel Economics Prize for constructing "green growth" models that show how innovation and climate policies can be integrated with economic growth.Working independently, they have addressed "some of our time's most basic and pressing questions about how we create long-term sustained and sustainable growth," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement.Nordhaus is a professor at Yale...

Suu Kyi promises 'transparency' over Rohingya atrocities

  

PNS Desk: Embattled leader Aung San Suu Kyi vowed Monday to increase transparency over her government's handling of the Rohingya crisis while pitching for foreign investment in Myanmar ahead of a regional summit in Tokyo.Suu Kyi, once garlanded as a global rights champion, has seen a sharp fall from grace due to her failure to speak up following a brutal military crackdown on Myanmar's Rohingya minority."I'm ready to acknowledge that we have challenges to face particularly with...

11 killed as 5.4 magnitude earthquake hits Haiti

  

PNS Desk: A 5.9-magnitude earthquake struck just off the northwest coast of Haiti late Saturday, killing at least 11 people and causing damage to buildings in the Caribbean nation, authorities said.The epicenter of the quake was located about 19 kilometers (12 miles) northwest of the city of Port-de-Paix, the US Geological Survey reported.Government spokesman Eddy Jackson Alexis told AFP that 11 people were so far reported dead, adding that a disaster response task force had been set...

Limo crash kills 20 people in New York

  

PNS Desk: At least 20 people were killed in an accident in upstate New York, authorities said Sunday. The two-car crash happened shortly before 2 pm Saturday in Schoharie, town supervisor Alan Tavenner said in a statement. One of the vehicles involved was a limo, the National Transportation Safety Board said. The NTSB tweeted Sunday morning that it is sending a team to investigate. The crash happened outside an Apple Barrel Country Store & Cafe. New York State Police and...