World Echo

India's foreign ministry said peace along its disputed border with China is critical to ties between the Asian neighbours, amid reports of renewed military tensions between the two countries' troops in a remote corner of the Himalayas. New Delhi's comment is its second in less than a week and comes as the Asian giants, who share a long and disputed frontier, mend ties following deadly clashes in 2020. It also comes ahead of a BRICS summit in New Delhi from September 12 to 13 that Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to attend. "In matters relating to the border areas between India and China, we have always emphasised in discussions with the Chinese side that we consider these issues as most serious," Indian foreign ministry ⁠spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on Tuesday at a regular media briefing. "We have also stated that the state of...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that his country has given the United States proposals for ending the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. “We passed our proposals to the American side,” he said in an address on Tuesday evening. “America can help strengthen our defence, first and foremost through air defence, and it can put pressure on Russia so that its plans change – from prolonging the war to preparing to end it,” Zelenskyy added. His remarks come amid a halt in US-mediated peace efforts as the Russia-Ukraine war entered its fifth year. Under US mediation, Russia and Ukraine held three rounds of peace talks this January and February in a bid to find a settlement for the war. Read: Ukrainian prisoners recount torture, sexual abuse while in Russian detention However, negotiations have since paused, with Moscow and Kyiv attributing the halt to the US focus on Iran and the armed conflict in the Middle East, which began on February 28. The ...

North Korea fired a ballistic missile on Wednesday toward the sea off the Korean Peninsula's east coast, South Korean and Japanese authorities said, days ahead of major joint military exercises by Seoul and Washington long denounced by Pyongyang. The missile was launched from the Wonsan area on North Korea's east coast at around 6am (2100 GMT Tuesday), South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said, six days after North Korea fired another ballistic missile from the same area. The launch comes ahead of South Korean and United States military drills, dubbed Ulchi Freedom Shield, scheduled for August 17 to 27, aimed at countering Pyongyang's evolving nuclear and weapons capabilities. Hong Min, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, said the launch was likely part of North Ko...

US President Donald Trump took a secret military flight from Turkey last month in an operation that involved him being moved between aircraft in a catering truck, an extraordinary deception prompted by an Iranian assassination threat, the Washington Post reported. The ​White House said at the time that the president was flying aboard Air Force One from Turkey, where he had attended a NATO ‌summit, to Britain. But moments after Trump had boarded the plane, he left it in secret via the catering truck and boarded another aircraft for the flight to Britain, the Post said on Monday, quoting unnamed sources. The New York Times carried a similar report, quoting unnamed US officials. Trump had taken a newly renovated Qatari-donated jet to Ankara for the NATO summit but unexpectedly announced he would use ​an older Air Force One when departing the country, a move that prompted questions about the newer plane's security. The trip to NATO was the first ​international tr...

A Syrian court sentenced ousted leader Bashar al-Assad to death on Tuesday after a trial in absentia, convicting him of crimes including killings, torture, and arbitrary arrest during the country's nearly 14-year war. It was the first conviction against Assad, who was ousted in a rebel offensive in December 2024 that ended decades of his family's iron-fisted rule over Syria, and the brutal war that killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians. Assad fled the capital Damascus as rebel fighters approached nearly two years ago, and is currently in Moscow. In a trial of former government officials on Tuesday, a judge handed down a death sentence to Assad over the crimes of "premeditated and intentional murder of more than one person and of children, torture, arbitrary arrest and crimes against humanity". Read: Trump removes Syria from terror list Atef Najib, a security official under Assad, was also sentenced to death. Assad, who was born in 1965, became pr...

Rescue efforts across western Colombia carried into a second day on Tuesday as emergency workers dug through collapsed buildings and flattened homes, amid expectations that the death toll from the country's most powerful earthquake in decades could rise. The 7.4-magnitude earthquake tore through Colombia's coffee-growing heartland early on Monday, killing at least 164 people. The quake reduced multi-story buildings to rubble in cities such as Pereira and Cali, and cracked apart one of the towers of a historic cathedral in the city of Manizales. Emergency teams aided by police, soldiers and volunteers worked through the night with excavators and, at times, their bare hands, hunting for survivors beneath debris. In Cali, home to about 2.2 million people, at least 85 people were killed. Dozens of buildings were left leaning precariously or destroyed outright, forcing residents into the streets. Seve...