A suicide bomber attacked a mosque in Afghanistan’s northeastern Kunduz province on Friday, killing 46 people and wounding more than 140. Video footage showed bodies surrounded by debris inside the mosque that is used by people from the minority Shi’ite Muslim community. No group immediately claimed responsibility. The blast follows several attacks, in recent weeks, some of which have been claimed by the Sunni Muslim militants of Islamic State.
A Senate committee report released Thursday detailed new instances where former President Donald Trump and his allies sought to use the Justice Department to overturn the 2020 election. The report offers the most comprehensive look to date at both new and previously reported details of Trump’s maneuvering in advance of the Jan. 6 insurrection to manufacture doubts about his loss to Joe Biden.
Chinese officials have ordered more than 70 mines in Inner Mongolia to increase coal production by almost 100m tonnes, with the country battling its worst power crunch and coal shortages in years. The move is the latest attempt by Chinese authorities to boost coal supply amid record high prices and shortages of electricity that have led to power rationing across the country, crippling industrial output.
India’s loss making national carrier Air India has been sold to the Tata group, the country’s largest conglomerate. The government has sold the airline to the company, which was the highest bidder at nearly $2.4bn. The Tata group originally founded the airline in 1932 before it was taken over by the government in 1953. The government had for years been trying to sell the airline, which has racked up losses worth $9.5bn.
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund completed a buyout of Premier League club Newcastle on Thursday, giving hope to fans dreaming of a first title in almost a century but concerning human rights activists that the kingdom had gained a foothold in the world’s richest soccer league. Supporters descended on the club’s St. James’ Park stadium, some chanting “we are Saudis, we do what we want” amid the promise of long-desired investment.
Nato has expelled eight Russian diplomats it says have been working secretly as intelligence officers. The military alliance has also halved the size of Moscow’s mission working at its Brussels headquarters to 10. It is the first time Nato has taken such action against Moscow since it expelled seven Russian diplomats from the mission in the wake of the 2018 Salisbury spy poisonings.
A federal judge temporarily blocked on Wednesday a near-total ban on abortion in Texas, the toughest such law in the United States, following a challenge from President Joe Biden’s administration after the U.S. Supreme Court let it proceed. The action by U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman in Austin prevents the state from enforcing the Republican-backed law, which prohibits women from obtaining an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, while litigation over its legality continues.
At least 20 people have been killed after an earthquake struck Pakistan’s southern Balochistan province early on Thursday, officials have told the BBC. Authorities say the death toll may increase, and that many people were killed when structures collapsed. Many of the dead were women and children, the Reuters news agency said. The US Geological Survey said it was a 5.9 magnitude quake that struck at a shallow depth of 9km.
Tanzanian author Abdulrazak Gurnah has won the 2021 Nobel Prize in literature, the award-giving body said. The prestigious prize was awarded on Thursday by the Swedish Academy, which cited Gurnah’s “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”. Born in Zanzibar and based in England, Gurnah recently retired as a professor of post-colonial literature at the University of Kent.
Netflix has edited out a phone number that appears in its hit series Squid Game after a South Korean woman and others who use similar combinations were deluged with calls – with some callers even asking to join the show’s life-or-death games. The South Korea-made production has topped Netflix popularity charts in 90 countries since its launch last month and is on track to become its most watched series ever.