Author: News Desk

Japan’s Sakurajima volcano shot smoke and ash miles into the sky on Friday in its biggest eruption in more than three years, Kyodo News reported. The volcano, on the southernmost main island of Kyushu, spewed ash 5.5 km (3.4 miles) high, the first time the ash cloud from an eruption has exceeded 5 km since July 2016, Kyodo said, citing a local meteorological observatory. The volcano has been highly active, erupting more than 100 times just this year, the report said, adding no damage has been reported so far. Follow us on Twitter – twitter.com/StarvisionN Like & Follow us on Facebook…

India’s Supreme Court on Saturday awarded a Hindu group the ownership of a centuries-old religious site also claimed by Muslims in a case that has caused deep divisions and deadly riots between the two communities. Following is a timeline of the events that have shaped the case. 1528 – The mosque in Ayodhya, in what is now India’s biggest state of Uttar Pradesh, was built by Mughal emperor Babur, according to documents produced by Muslim groups in court. 1949 – Muslim groups accuse government officials of conniving with Hindu monks to place an idol of an infant Lord Ram in…

An official on the White House’s National Security Council said he heard the U.S. ambassador to the European Union explicitly press Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe Biden and his son, according to a transcript released on Friday by Democrats leading the impeachment probe of President Donald Trump. Alexander Vindman, a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and Ukraine expert on the NSC, said Ambassador Gordon Sondland made it clear in a July 10 meeting at the White House that the investigations of the Bidens and Ukrainian gas company Burisma would have to be opened for Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to get an…

Ivanka Trump on Friday echoed her father’s view that the House impeachment investigation is an attempt to overturn the 2016 election. But, in an interview with The Associated Press, she parted ways with President Donald Trump by calling the identity of the impeachment whistleblower “not particularly relevant.” The Republican president and some of his allies lately have been pressing the news media to publicize the whistleblower’s name. Trump has also tweeted for the individual to “come forward.” But Ivanka Trump said the person’s motives were more important, though she declined to speculate on what they may have been. “The whistleblower shouldn’t be…

In testimony released Thursday by House Democrats, a high-ranking State Department official said he understood President Trump’s bottom-line demand of Ukraine was for a statement that included three key words: “investigations, Biden and Clinton.” “Clinton” was a reference to the conspiracy theory promoted by Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani about foreign efforts to sway the 2016 election. The official, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent, was relaying what he was told by Gordon Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the European Union. Sondland said the president “wanted nothing less than [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelensky to go to microphone and say ‘investigations, Biden…

Flyweight world title contender Jose Torres has reached the Kingdom of Bahrain ready to become the promotion’s first-ever champion at 125lbs. The American fighter decided to come earlier to get used to the time difference and was greeted by the BRAVE International Combat Week crew and the mascots that will entertain the biggest fight week in the history of Asia. Torres will take on Marcel Adur from Brazil for the inaugural Flyweight title on November 15th at BRAVE CF 29 and said he had a tough week ahead of him as he readies to juggle fight week commitments to his…

Rohit Sharma knew that the conditions were “perfect” for batting in his 100th T20 International and all he had to do was to ‘stay still and tonk the ball”. Cyclone ‘Maha’ threat was looming large on Rajkot but it was Indian cricket’s ‘Hit-Man’, who struck like tornado during his 85 off 43 balls as India levelled the three-match T20 series against Bangladesh with a eight-wicket victory in the second game. “All these years, I’ve just tried to do my best with the bat in hand. I knew conditions were perfect. So all I wanted to do was stay still and…

In the latest iteration of his increasingly frantic pushback against the impeachment inquiry in the House, President Trump on Thursday said investigators should call former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter to testify in the probe. Trump tweeted a quote, attributed to Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., asking how Hunter Biden was qualified to sit on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company while his father was carrying out U.S. policy against corruption in Ukraine. “A very good question,” Trump tweeted. “He and Sleepy Joe must testify!” The impeachment hearings were triggered by allegations that the White House pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr…

The International Criminal Court sentenced former Congolese military leader Bosco Ntaganda on Thursday to 30 years in prison for atrocities including murder, rape and conscripting child soldiers. Ntaganda, 46, was found guilty in July on 18 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for acts committed when he was military chief of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC) militia in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in 2002-2003. At Thursday’s sentencing, Judge Robert Fremr said there were no real mitigating circumstances and issued the 30-year sentence, the longest handed down by the Hague court to date. “The crimes for which…

The euro zone will restrain spending under draft budget plans submitted by the bloc’s governments, the European Commission forecast on Thursday, despite calls to counter a worsening economic slowdown. In its quarterly economic forecasts, Brussels said Germany, the largest economy in the 19-country bloc, would keep a budget surplus at least until 2021, although the surplus would narrow. High-debt countries would keep spending, despite recommendations for thriftiness. France’s deficit would be above the EU ceiling this year and Italy’s debt would grow to nearly 140% of output, the Commission predicted. Despite a worsening growth outlook [L8N27N42W], Germany is set to…