US ⁠President Donald Trump made a ⁠joke about the popularity of ⁠the name Mohammad in the Muslim world as he mocked Iran’s presidency during a campaign speech on Friday. “You know, if you’re in doubt about somebody’s name from the Middle East, just say ‘Mohammad’,” Trump told a ‌crowd in Dalton, Georgia. “You have about a 65 per cent chance. ‘Hello, Mohammad.’ I’ve done it for years now. I’ve never been wrong.” Mohammad is one of the most common male names among Muslims, who often name their...

⁠North Korea conducted an underwater ⁠test of a new torpedo weapon system on Thursday to verify technological upgrades, state news agency KCNA reported on Saturday, describing the test as a success and a significant step in ‌the country’s naval development. The test verified propulsion technology developed through more than 180 tests over the past five years, KCNA said, adding that artificial intelligence was used for target detection and guidance in the new high-speed precision-guided...

Police detained India’s ‘cockroach’ movement founder Abhijeet Dipke on Friday, student leaders and supporters on Friday as hundreds poured into central Delhi, waving the national flag and demanding the resignation of India’s election chief. The youth-led ‘Cockroach Janta Party’ (CJP), opposition groups and student organisations have held almost daily protests this month demanding Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation over a revision of voter lists that critics ⁠say favours...

Ukraine’s resumption of strikes on Russian refineries is ⁠a “disgrace” that keeps ⁠global energy prices elevated, US President ⁠Donald Trump told the Newsmax news outlet in an interview aired on Thursday. Ukraine struck a Russian oil refinery after President Volodymyr Zelensky declared that Kyiv was abandoning a ceasefire covering energy sites that Trump had announced, ‌and criticised his willingness to strike deals with Moscow. “All he’s doing is making the world oil price higher. Well, I think...

Indian authorities have asked Bollywood actor ⁠Imran Khan to ⁠leave the country by ⁠the end of the month, saying he breached immigration laws after joining a protest against the election commission chief, local media reported on Thursday. Khan, 43, is a US ‌citizen, the Indian Express newspaper reported. Under Indian law, foreigners’ participation in political protests may be treated as a violation of immigration and visa rules. Khan was given until October 28 to leave the country, the Times of...

Ukraine struck ⁠a Russian oil refinery on Thursday, after President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv was “done” supporting a ceasefire on energy targets announced by US President Donald Trump and ignored by Russia. Since Trump’s surprise announcement on Sunday that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to halt attacks on energy, Kyiv had suspended attacks on Russian refineries, which Trump blames for raising diesel prices on global markets. But in the days that followed, Russia rained down deadly missile...

Asian countries must remind themselves about what happened during the region’s financial crisis in the late 1990s and guard against a recurrence of such shocks, the head of the Philippine central bank said ‌on Wednesday. Before the Asian financial crisis started in 1997, regional economies saw huge capital inflows that prompted the World Bank to describe it as the “East Asian miracle”, Eli Remolona, governor of the central bank, said in an International Monetary Fund panel on the outlook for the...

An administrative building belonging to Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco in the eastern city of Dhahran was attacked, causing a limited fire, the Energy Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday as fighting between Yemen’s Iran-allied Houthis and the kingdom intensified. Authorities responded to the incident late on Tuesday and took necessary measures, the ministry said, adding that there were no injuries or deaths. A company source told Reuters earlier that a ballistic...

Russia’s FSB security agency said on Tuesday it had detained a Japanese journalist for alleged espionage, and Moscow’s Foreign Ministry said it regretted that Tokyo was using correspondents to carry out spying. In a statement on its website, the FSB said the Hokkaido Shimbun journalist was detained in the far eastern Sakhalin region on the day before he planned to leave Russia. It did not specify when this was. Russia and Japan, ‌which never signed a formal World War II peace treaty, have seen...