DHAKA: Tom Clancy, the best-selling author of “The Hunt for Red October” and other wildly successful technological thrillers, has died. He was 66.Penguin Group (USA) on Wednesday said that Clancy died Tuesday in Baltimore. The publisher did not disclose a cause of death.Clancy arrived

DHAKA: Flowering plants may have originated more than 100 million years earlier than previously thought, according to scientists in Switzerland and Germany.The previously oldest known flowering plant-like pollen dates from the Early Cretaceous period which is around circa 145 ± 4 million

DHAKA: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and his Indian counterpart Salman Khurshid intend on discussing preparations for the Russian-Indian high-level summit planned for October 2013 at a meeting in Moscow on Wednesday.The VoR’s correspondent Polina Chernitsa reports, according to

DHAKA: The authorities say that the death toll from an unusual spate of hornet attacks in central China has reached 41.The Shaanxi provincial government said on Wednesday that the attacks had plagued not only the city of Ankang, where 19 died as reported by the official Xinhua News

DHAKA: The authorities say a man arrested at Florida’s Jacksonville International Airport had told security screeners he had a bomb in his backpack, but they only found an electronic scale and batteries.Zeljko Causevic was booked into jail early on Wednesday, reports The Straits

DHAKA: Western governments are considering allowing Iran to continue some uranium enrichment, as part of a possible deal to resolve a decade-old dispute that Tehran says it wants to reach within six months, a senior EU diplomat said.The new stance, a reaction to Iran president Hassan

DHAKA: Italian prime minister Enrico Letta won a confidence vote with a crushing majority after his challenger Silvio Berlusconi abandoned his bid to topple the government in a stunning about-turn.Out of 305 senators who took part in the vote, 235 were in favour of the government and 70

DHAKA: Seventeen countries including the United States, France and Australia have agreed to receive quotas of refugees fleeing the bloody conflict in Syria.The UN refugee agency said on Wednesday, reports daily Hurriyet.‘So far, UNHCR has 17 countries participating in the Syria

DHAKA: The Turkish parliament is likely to extend by a year a mandate authorising the sending of troops into Syria if needed after the government said the possible use of chemical weapons by president Bashar Assad posed a threat to Turkey.The government motion, due to be voted on by

DHAKA: A Swedish nuclear reactor was restarted on Wednesday following a three-day closure caused by a build-up of jellyfish in a cooling system, according to the operators.The incident occurred in reactor 3 at Oskarshamn power station on the Baltic Sea coast, which is run by OKG, a

DHAKA: Four suspected militants, three policemen and three mountain guides were killed in a shootout in Russia’s restive North Caucasus province of Dagestan.Local police said on Wednesday, reports The Jerusalem Post.The shootout occurred on Tuesday during a random patrol of a woody and

DHAKA: Syrian rebels and al-Qaida-linked fighters battled near the border with Turkey on Wednesday, activists said, in an outbreak of violence that exposes serious divisions between factions fighting president Bashar Assad.The al-Qaida-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)

DHAKA: Chinese president Xi Jinping arrived in Indonesia on Wednesday for his first visit to South-east Asia since taking office, striving to boost ties and economic partnerships with the region’s biggest country.He met his Indonesian counterpart Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and is expected

DHAKA: Iran’s parliament, dominated by conservatives, strongly endorsed president Hassan Rohani’s diplomatic bid to break down mistrust at the United Nations in New York last week, which ended with an historic phone call with US president Barack Obama, Iranian media said.The backing

DHAKA: US president Barack Obama has cancelled two stops on his four-nation Asian tour because of the government shutdown.The White House said Obama would not now visit Malaysia and the Philippines but would still travel to Indonesia and Brunei.Malaysia had already announced Obama would

DHAKA: Welcoming suggestions of Pakistani clerics regarding a ceasefire prior to peace talks, the Pakistani Taliban Tuesday night announced that they would reconsider their stance if the government was ready for a break in fighting.Ulema (clerics) and representatives of various religious

DHAKA: Gunmen shot down an Iraqi helicopter on Wednesday killing four security forces members during a military operation against militants in the desert.Army officers said, reports The Straits Times.The dead were two crew members and two soldiers who were on board when the helicopter was

DHAKA: Five Muslims have been killed in sectarian clashes in western Myanmar, according to a new police toll on Wednesday, after a mob of hundreds of Buddhists went on a rampage.‘The death toll rose to five - four men and a woman,’ a local police officer told media, adding that the

DHAKA: Somalia’s al-Shabab Islamists threatened Wednesday to step up militant attacks against Kenya, after Nairobi refused to pull its troops out of Somalia.The Al-Qaeda linked Shabab claimed responsibility for last week’s attack on Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall, in which at

DHAKA: The United States and South Korea signed a new strategy to deter North Korea’s possible use of nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction to enhance response effectiveness amid growing threats from Pyongyang.Their defence chiefs said on Wednesday, reports The Jerusalem