America

    Boxing icon Muhammad Ali has come out fighting against Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump and his controversial call for a ban on the entry of all Muslims into the US. Trump's comments have been widely condemned in the states from across the political spectrum with President Barack Obama calling for unity in the wake of the 2 December San Bernardino shootings which left 21 dead and were inspired by Islamic State terrorism. Ali, who became an outspoken advocate of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s and converted to Islam in 1975, also used his statement to speak out against the Islamic State (Isis/Daesh) and to say Islam had nothing to do with the attacks in Paris on 13 November. In the statement broadcast on US television, Ali, 73, said: "Speak...

    The White House on Tuesday said Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s call for the United States to ban Muslims from entering the country disqualified him from becoming president and called on Republicans to reject him immediately. White House spokesperson Josh Earnest said Trump’s campaign had a dustbin of history quality to it and said his comments were offensive and toxic. Donald Trump calls for barring Muslims from entering US. Earnest said other Republican presidential candidates, who have pledged to support the person who eventually wins their party’s nomination, should disavow Trump right now. The Express Tribune.

    Asserting that Bangladesh’s commitment to UN peacekeeping is strong and steadfast and it stands ready to go further, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has urged all members of the peacekeeping community to work together to ensure peace and security around the world, reports UNB from New York. “I call upon all members of the peacekeeping community to work together to ensure peace and security around the world,” she said. The Prime Minister said this at a Summit on Peacekeeping Operation at the UN Headquarters here on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Monday. Sheikh Hasina co-chaired the Summit with US President Barack Obama. She said Bangladesh is adopting a national peacekeeping strategy to better respond to the evolving needs of the UN peacekeeping missions on the gr...

Taj Hashmi: Recently, yet another Arab Muslim faced racial and religious discrimination in America. After being tipped off by a school teacher, the police arrested Ahmed Mohamed. A 14-year old school student at Irving, Texas for bringing a device to school, which he claimed was a clock he made to impress his science teacher. Although the device did not look like a bomb, the police arrested and detained the boy for several hours on charges of bringing a hoax-bomb to school. Meanwhile, Ahmed Mohamed has become a celebrity. Millions of Americans condemned the way his teachers and police treated him. President Obama formally invited him to the White House which was an exceptional gesture of goodwill towards Muslims, and a unique way of saying sorry to someone unnecessarily traumatised and hu...

    A man who shot dead two former colleagues on live television wrote a rambling 23-page suicide note and manifesto in which said he was "surprised I didn't 'do this' before now". According to ABC News, a man claiming to be Bryce Williams had called repeatedly asking for the station's fax number which was later used hours after the shooting in Smith Mountain Lake, Moneta, to send the document. In it, Vester Lee Flanagan - who used Bryce Williams on screen - described being the victim of racial discrimination and said the fatal shooting of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, "sent me over the top". He also claims the initials of the Charleston victims were on the bullets he used to kill reporter Alison Parker, 24, and cameraman Adam Ward, 27, and expresses ad...

    Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi repeatedly raped American hostage Kayla Mueller, according to accounts provided to US intelligence officials. Ms Mueller, whose death was confirmed in February, is said to have been kept for a while by Islamic State financier Abu Sayyaf and his wife, Umm Sayyaf. According to a Yazidi teenager who was held with 26-year-old Ms Mueller, al Baghdadi took the American as his "wife", repeatedly forcing her to have sex when he visited. Mueller family spokeswoman Emily Lenzner told the Associated Press news agency the 14-year-old Yazidi girl, who later escaped, spoke to US officials. They checked out her story with other intelligence before passing it on in June to Kayla Mueller's parents, Carl and Marsha Mueller, Ms Lenzner added. An unna...

    US Navy F-18E Super Hornets, which have been used to strike Isis targets in Syria. It is not known what planes British pilots have used to carry out strikes. David Cameron knew UK pilots were involved in US-led bombing missions of Isis targets in Syria, even though parliament had expressly rejected British military involvement in the country in 2013. The prime minister’s spokeswoman said on Friday that up to a dozen pilots had been involved since September, but they were not operating under a British chain of command. “The PM was aware that UK personnel were involved in US operations and what they were doing.” She said it was a long-standing practice for the UK to embed forces with other countries and this was no different. But she was not able to point immediately to...

    The Amtrak train that crashed in Philadelphia, killing at least seven people, was hurtling at 106 mph before it ran off the rails along a sharp curve where the speed limit drops to just 50 mph, federal investigators said Wednesday. The engineer applied the emergency brakes moments before the crash but slowed the train to only 102 mph by the time the locomotive's black box stopped recording data, said Robert Sumwalt, of the National Transportation Safety Board. The speed limit just before the bend is 80 mph, he said. The engineer, whose name was not released, refused to give a statement to law enforcement and left a police precinct with a lawyer, police said. Sumwalt said federal accident investigators want to talk to him but will give him a day or two to recover from th...