Amrutha Gayathri

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned Thursday that the nation was faced with a dire cyber threat from foreign actors targeting computer control systems that operate chemical, electricity and water plants and those that guide transportation.

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2012 was awarded to Chinese author Mo Yan, who in his dozens of stories and novels uses magic realism to merge folk tales, China’s history and the contemporary, the Swedish Academy announced Thursday.

Forced evictions, often involving violence and harassment, are on the rise in China as local authorities seek to offset the huge debts by seizing and then selling off land to real estate developers, Amnesty International said Thursday.

The U.S. has sent troops to Jordan to assist the government in handling the flood of Syrian refugees besides bolstering its military capabilities and monitoring chemical and biological weapons sites in Syria, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Wednesday.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2012 was awarded jointly to American scientists Robert J. Lefkowitz and Brian K. Kobilka for "for studies of G-protein–coupled receptors" that shed light on how billions of cells in our body interact with their environment, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Wednesday.

In two unrelated incidents, a Boston resident who aroused the authorities’ suspicion by carrying hazardous materials and wearing protective gear was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport while two persons were held at Heathrow Airport on suspicion of committing terrorism offenses.

Malala Yousufzai, a 14-year-old Pakistani girl who rose to fame for speaking up against the Taliban and for advocating girls’ education which the extremists oppose, was critically injured Tuesday by a gunman in the Swat Valley, northwest of Pakistan’s capital city of Islamabad.

The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2012 was awarded jointly to French scientist Serge Haroche and American scientist David J. Wineland for the "ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Tuesday.

Robert Vadra, the businessman son-in-law of India’s Congress-led ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Chairman Sonia Gandhi, deserves some credit for the clever wordplay that he has offered to define a nation and its people.

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi Monday pardoned all those arrested during last year’s revolution that ousted the country’s long-ruling leader Hosni Mubarak.

The Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology for 2012 was awarded jointly to British scientist John B. Gurdon and Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka for their work in stem cell research, the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm announced Monday.

Can a country as famously tolerant, integrated and prosperous as Norway feel safe again, now that Anders Behring Breivik, the perpetrator of the misfortune that hit Norway July 22 last year in the form of two sequential lone wolf terrorist attacks, is behind bars serving his 21-year sentence? Maybe not. “There is a real chance that 7/22 can happen again,” Kjetil Stormark the Norwegian author of the recently released book, “The Oslo Killer Files: Private emails of a mass murderer,” told the International Business Times in an email interview.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez won the presidential elections Sunday with a comfortable margin beating his young challenger Henrique Capriles and extending his 14 years of rule to another six-year term.

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi on Saturday defended his showing in the first 100 days in office and listed his government’s accomplishments to a cheering crowd of mainly Muslim Brotherhood supporters at a gathering in Cairo.

Two U.S. soldiers were killed in eastern Afghanistan in an insurgent attack Saturday, news agencies reported citing U.S. military officials.

North Korea’s state-run news agency published sinister warnings of a new war in the Korean peninsula even as South Korean media reported Saturday that Seoul and Washington had reached an agreement on extending the range of South Korean ballistic missiles to counter defense threat from Pyongyang.

People in Saudi Arabia have resorted to Twitter and Facebook to protest the sudden increase in chicken and egg prices by as much as 40 percent in the past two weeks.

The U.S. lawmakers are considering expanding the economic sanctions on Iran in the wake of the near-collapse of the Iranian currency, which senior Iranian clerics called a consequence of an American-led conspiracy to wage an economic war on Tehran.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Thursday criticized the U.S. drone policy in Pakistan while extending full support to Islamabad’s stance on the attacks.

A landslide in quake-hit Yunnan province of southwest China Thursday left 18 primary school students dead, news agencies reported citing Chinese officials.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai lashed out at the U.S. Thursday for not fighting insurgents in their “safe havens,” implying that insurgent activity in neighboring Pakistan remains unchecked.

Three bombs ripped through the center of the Syrian city of Aleppo Wednesday killing and injuring dozens, state media reported.

The U.S. administration has been accused of covering up for two weeks the intelligence reports suggesting the involvement of militant organizations in the attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that led to the killings of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans.

In a turnaround from their earlier threat to assassinate Pakistan’s cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, the Pakistani Taliban have extended him support during his upcoming address in the lawless South Waziristan, a tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, the Telegraph has reported.

Pope Benedict XVI’s former butler Paolo Gabriele is set to take the stand for the first time Tuesday, the second day of his trial, for stealing the confidential documents which he said was an attempt to expose corruption in the Vatican.

North Korea criticized the U.S. at the U.N. General Assembly Monday for its “hostile” policy towards Pyongyang that has left the Korean peninsula a “spark” away from a “thermonuclear war.”

A boat en route to the famed Victoria Harbor, carrying the employees of Hong Kong’s electric company and their families to watch fireworks display, collided with a commuter ferry Monday night and sank leaving at least 36 people dead, news agencies reported citing Hong Kong authorities.

Three NATO soldiers along with 10 Afghans were killed in a suicide bomb attack in the crowded center of Khost City in eastern Afghanistan Monday morning, news agencies reported quoting officials.

A major typhoon that hit Japan’s main island Sunday was speeding out Monday after leaving two people dead and dozens injured.