ENNISKILLEN (Northern Ireland): Russian President Vladimir Putin faced growing isolation on the second day of a G8 summit on Tuesday as world leaders lined up to pressure him into toning down his support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Syria was set to dominate the last day of the meeting in a secluded, heavily guarded golf resort in Northern Ireland, with Putin standing firm on [Full Article...]

London: NATO Tuesday handed over security to Afghan forces for the whole of Afghanistan for the first time since the Taliban were ousted in 2001. At a ceremony in Kabul, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that from Wednesday “our own security and military forces will lead all the security activities”, BBC reported. Tuesday’s ceremony saw the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) hand over [Full Article...]

London: Prosecutors in Hungary have charged 98-year-old Laszlo Csatary with participation in Nazi war crimes, a report said on Tuesday. Csatary is under arrest in Hungary, accused of assisting in the murder of 15,700 Jews during World War II. He denies the allegations, BBC reported. In 1944, Csatary was serving in the Nazi police in Kosice, now in Slovakia. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, based [Full Article...]

Lahore: Pakistan’s Punjab province government has allocated over Rs 61 million in its budget for fiscal 2013-14 for the largest centre of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the parent body of banned terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba that carried out the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Besides a grant-in-aid of over Rs 61 million for the JuD’s centre known as ‘Markaz-e-Taiba’, the provincial government has allocated Rs 350 million for setting [Full Article...]

Seoul: South Korea on Monday joined the United States in insisting that rival North Korea take “concrete” steps towards abandoning its nuclear weapons if it genuinely wants to end its international isolation. The South’s comment came a day after Pyongyang sought to circumvent Seoul by proposing direct talks with Washington. The move was widely seen as an effort to drive a wedge between the [Full Article...]

Colombo: The Tamil Tiger rebel front organisations are still operating in Germany under the guise of community organisations, the Sri Lankan external affairs ministry claimed on Monday. External Affairs Minister G.L. Peiris, during a discussion he had in Berlin with the German Minister of Foreign Affairs Guido Westerwelle, said that according to information available to Sri Lankan authorities, there are a substantial number of [Full Article...]

LOUGH ERNE, (Northern Ireland): Barack Obama will seek the help on Monday of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Syria’s most powerful ally, to bring Bashar al-Assad to the negotiating table and end a two-year civil war. At their first private face-to-face meeting in a year, Obama will try to find common ground with Putin on the sidelines of a G8 summit in Northern Ireland after angering [Full Article...]

Bangkok: Thailand’s national Buddhism body said on Monday it is monitoring monks nationwide for any inappropriate behavior following complaints ignited by a video showing Buddhist monks flying on a private jet. The YouTube video emerging recently showed one of the monks was wearing stylish aviator sunglasses, carrying a luxury brand travel bag and sporting a pair of modern-looking wireless headphones. It attracted criticism from [Full Article...]