World Echo

Israeli authorities are considering plans to build 1,670 new housing units in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission said late Wednesday. In a statement, the commission said the development came shortly after 12 Western countries decided to impose trade restrictions on products from Jewish settlements and called on Israel to halt settlement expansion. It said the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has approved 104 new Jewish settlements and established 160 agricultural settlement outposts since taking office in late 2022. The plans, which have reached the final approval stage, include 365 new housing units in the Maale Amos settlement southeast of Bethlehem and 200 in the Talmon settlement northwest of Ramallah. Read: FO welcomes UK's steps against Israel as 'clear rejection of illegal actions' in occupied Palestine The commission said the plans also include establishing thre...

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's daughter and apparent successor is believed to have a younger sibling, South Korea's spy agency said on Thursday, offering a more detailed view of the ruling family's structure. Seoul's spy agency has previously said Kim is believed to have three children, but there has been uncertainty about their order of birth. Kim's daughter, Kim Ju Ae, was first introduced to the public in 2022 when she accompanied her father to the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile. The Kim family has ruled North Korea with an iron grip for decades, and a cult of personality surrounding their "Paektu bloodline" dominates daily life in the diplomatically isolated country. Read: North Korea, Russia open their first road bridge "The National Intelligence Service currently assesses that Kim Ju Ae is being groomed as the successor and understands she has a younger sibling of unknown gender," the agency said in a state...

President George W Bush was jogging around a Florida golf course before dawn when I first saw him on September 11, 2001. As one of two Reuters correspondents travelling with Bush that day, I was covering what was expected to be a routine event with schoolchildren to promote his education policies. He had been president of the United States for less than eight months. Within hours, the untested Bush was confronting the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbour in 1941. The tragedy unfolded as Bush visited the Emma E Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida. As the president was meeting staff and students, I was in a nearby press centre set up for reporters. We watched a live television broadcast showing smoke pouring from one of the World Trade Centre twin towers in New York. It had been hit by a plane in what we initially assumed was an accident. Then, as we watched, a second plane struck. Bush was at the school, reading to children. Cameras captured the shocked...

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday came under heavy fire across political, media, and social circles following the dawn demolition of a 115-year-old mosque inside the Saharanpur Collectorate campus. The mosque — which caretakers and legal documents confirm was built in 1911 — was razed using heavy machinery under cover of darkness in the early hours of Saturday. The action was carried out under intense security, including five companies of armed constabulary and anti-riot police forces, while key opposition representatives were placed under house arrest to prevent them from reaching the site or voicing public concerns. The hasty destruction came just three days after a local district court dismissed an appeal, denying the mosque committee reasonable time to approach the high court. Read: Pakistan condemns demolition of century-old mosque in India's Saharanpur Opposition figures, social activists, and prominent religious or...

Bangladesh, which once came close to eliminating measles, is facing its worst outbreak on record, with 999 suspected and confirmed measles-related deaths reported since March as hospitals struggle with overcrowding, shortages and a continuing influx of sick children. The prolonged outbreak, despite a nationwide emergency vaccination campaign ​launched in April, follows disruption to routine immunisation in 2024 and 2025, experts said, when the country was going through political turmoil after a deadly uprising against then prime minister Sheikh ‌Hasina. Bangladesh is currently experiencing the biggest measles outbreak in the world, according to a list on the United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention website. Health officials and experts said missed vaccinations and vaccine supply problems as a result of the political upheaval had left children vulnerable, particularly infants under nine months who are too young to get routine vaccinations, helping f...

Nepali authorities retrieved another 10 bodies in flood-hit areas as the death toll from devastating floods and mudslides that struck the Nepal-China border late last month climbed to 1,410, with over 5,650 still missing, official statistics showed Wednesday. Of those missing, 848 are foreigners, according to official figures from both Nepal and China. Some 1,367 bodies have been recovered from flood-stricken districts in Nepal, while 5,132 people, including 587 foreigners, remain missing, according to Nepal's National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority. Over 13,600 people have so far been rescued, including as recently as last weekend. Read: Pakistan dispatches 100 tons of humanitarian assistance to Nepal The death toll from massive mudslides in China's southwestern Xizang Autonomous Region, also known as Tibet, remains 43, with 519 people, including 261 foreigners, still missing. The disaster struck on August 26 when a glacier on Nepal's Mount...