Iraqi security forces fired teargas and live bullets in renewed clashes with protesters in Baghdad and other cities on Sunday, Reuters witnesses and security sources said. The security forces tried to clear sit-in camps across the country and fired live rounds in the air after protesters resisted with petrol bombs and stones. At least 14 protesters were wounded in the capital and at least 17 were... More ...

Australia’s bushfire-stricken state of Queensland saw heavy rainfalls on Sunday dampening some of the fires that have razed 2.5 million hectares (1.2 million acres) of land since September, but the wet weather caused major flooding. Some areas received a quarter of the annual average rainfall, according to Reuters’ calculations, with the state’s Bureau of Meteorology saying coas... More ...

A mother and her two-year-old daughter have been pulled alive from a collapsed building in Turkey more than a day after an earthquake killed at least 31 people. Ayse Yildiz and her child Nusra had spent 28 hours trapped in the rubble in the eastern city of Elazig following Friday’s 6.8-magnitude quake. Rescue teams heard their cries several hours before they were able to reach them, with n... More ...

LONDON- An investigation into claims that the phone of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was hacked has been called into question by cybersecurity experts and several major US media outlets, including Wall Street Journal, New York Times and the Associated Press (AP).Specialists on Thursday said evidence from the privately commissioned probe by FTI Consulting is not strong enough for a definitive conclusion, n... More ...

U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders drew large, passionate crowds in Iowa this weekend, even when he was not there. The U.S. Senator from Vermont has been rising in opinion polls just as Iowans prepare to pick their choice of Democratic presidential nominee on Feb. 3, but has been stuck in Washington, where he is serving as a juror in Republican President Donald Trump’s impeachment t... More ...

Dubai Islamic Bank said on Thursday it has completed the acquisition of Noor Bank to consolidate its position as the top Islamic lender in the United Arab Emirates. DIB said in a statement posted on Dubai bourse website the acquisition was carried out through a share swap after securing the necessary approvals from the regulatory authorities. The bank said the move raises its assets to $75 billi... More ...

On January 2, 2020, bad weather conditions meant that the Baghdad-bound Sham Wings Airlines flight 501 was delayed for nearly 3 hours. The plane was carrying 156 passengers, eleven of whom were in business-class. This small group – five Iraqis, five Iranians and a Syrian – had boarded the plane at the last minute before take-off. Most of them had passports with their unofficial names,... More ...

JEDDAH- The Royal Commission for AlUla has collaborated with Desert X to bring an interactive installation to the area for the first time. Desert X began in 2017, in California’s Coachella Valley, as a way to connect modern art with desert communities and cultures.It is Desert X’s first international collaboration and starts on Jan. 31, running through to March 7, as part of AlUla&rsq... More ...

A team with several members from the University of Wurzburg and one from Peking University has found that women respond less strongly to aversive sounds if there is another person nearby. In their paper published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the group describes experiments they conducted with female volunteers and what they learned from them.Scientists have learned how to mak... More ...

Brains with a typically male design have been linked to an increased risk of autism. The discovery provides the first anatomical evidence for the “extreme male brain” theory which argues that the developmental disorder arises from exaggerated male traits. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is known to be two to five times more common in men than in women.The condition varies greatly in s... More ...

Valencia Gunder knows the inaccuracies of television crime dramas all too well. As a criminal justice activist, she’s often the only voice in the room representing women or people of color. Known by her Miami community as the “Modern Day Fannie Lou Hamer” after the civil rights activist, Gunder shares her own story of incarceration in 2010 to advocate for inmate and gender right... More ...

A virus similar to the SARS pathogen has claimed 56 lives since emerging in a market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, and spread around the world.Here are the places that have confirmed cases of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus: China As of Sunday, almost 2,000 people have been infected across China, the bulk of them in and around Wuhan. Nearly all of the 56 who have died were in the Wuhan regio... More ...

A work by Vincent van Gogh has been confirmed as genuine and was “made during psychosis”, experts have said. The painting, titled Self-Portrait (1889) was bought as a genuine Van Gogh in 1910 by Norway’s National Museum, but doubts had surrounded its authenticity since 1970. Those doubts have now been dispelled after researchers found that it was indeed painted by the Dutch mas... More ...

The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has shifted two preliminary matches in its elite club competition from Iran to neutral venues because of security concerns, Asian soccer’s governing body said on Wednesday. Shahr Khodro FC were scheduled to host Bahrain’s Riffa and Esteghlal FC were set to play Kuwait SC on Tuesday but both Asian Champions League matches were postponed after seve... More ...

DHAKA - A Bangladeshi fifth-grader’s new communication app — Lita Free Video Calls and Chat — has created a huge buzz among local internet users. Already, 10,500 people have downloaded the app from the Google Play Store since Saturday. Ayman Al-Anam submitted the app to Google on Dec. 27. After scrutiny and manual verification, Google uploaded the app on its Play Store on Dec. 3... More ...