INTERNATIONAL

Nepal’s parliament has elected women’s rights campaigner Bidhya Devi Bhandari as its first female president, in a move hailed as a milestone. She is the second person to hold the mainly ceremonial role. The 54-year-old is currently the vice-chair of the ruling Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist Leninist). Ms Bhandari was defence minister from 2009 to 2011. As president, ...

US Republicans have traded blows in a heated presidential debate in Colorado that featured several angry exchanges. Frontrunners Donald Trump and Ben Carson, with no political experience, were under attack from the start. Ohio Governor John Kasich condemned their “fantasy tax plans” and added: “We can’t elect someone who doesn’t know how to do the job.” Mr Carson, a retired ...

A senior Vatican priest, stripped of his post after admitting being in a gay relationship, has launched a scathing attack on the Roman Catholic Church. In a letter to Pope Francis this month, Krzysztof Charamsa accused the Church of making the lives of millions of gay Catholics globally “a hell”. He criticised what he called the Vatican’s hypocrisy in banning ...

We frequently hear of the future dangers that human-caused climate change could bring, but few paint as bleak a picture as the one laid in a new study released this week. The study by authors from Loyola Marymount University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers a harsh assessment: Climate change could leave major cities in a key part of ...

The US has indicated a shift in its campaign against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, including the use of direct ground raids. Defence Secretary Ash Carter said there would also be more air strikes against “high-value targets”. Observers say his comments reflect acknowledgment of the lack of progress in defeating the militant group. Separately, the US says Iran ...

Noor Wali was sitting inside his shoe shop in northwestern Pakistan when he heard a loud roaring sound and saw cracks appear in the walls. He ran out of the building just before it collapsed into rubble. “I avoided death by inches,” he told CNN. His shop in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province was one of thousands of structures flattened by the ...

Rescue efforts are being stepped up to help those affected by the magnitude-7.5 earthquake which hit remote areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan on Monday. At least 275 people are known to have died, and up to 2,000 were injured. Rescue teams have been sent to remote mountainous areas where the effects of the quake are still unclear. The quake’s focus ...

More than 100 people have been killed in a powerful earthquake which has hit north-eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan. Tremors from the magnitude 7.5 quake were also felt in northern India and Tajikistan. At least 12 of the victims were schoolgirls killed in a crush as they tried to get out of their building. The earthquake was centred in the mountainous ...

A whale-watching boat has sunk off the coast of British Columbia in western Canada, leaving at least five people dead and others missing. The boat carrying 27 people sank near Tofino on Vancouver Island in the west of the country, coastguard and rescue officials said. A coroner quoted by Canadian media said at least five people had died. Their nationalities ...

Another 100,000 spaces in refugee welcome centres will be created under a deal agreed by European leaders at an emergency summit in Brussels. The heads of 11 EU states and three non-EU countries met to discuss how to handle growing number of migrants. More than 9,000 migrants arrived in Greece every day last week, the highest rate so far this ...