Iran has been struck by its most powerful earthquake for nearly 40 years, with tremors felt across Pakistan, India and the Middle East.

The epicentre of the 7.8 magnitude quake was near the south-east city of Khash, close to the Pakistani border, the US Geological Survey said.

Offices were evacuated in Abu Dhabi and tall buildings swayed in the Indian capital Delhi, witnesses said.

Iranian state TV has reported at least 40 people killed.

However, one official was quoted …

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ALBANY, N.Y. – Several labor unions say that more than $400,000 in contributions by Walmart since 2001 helped bring about the creation of an unusual taxpayer-paid subsidy last month to help employers offset a higher minimum wage in New York.

Senate Republicans, who had long opposed an increase in the minimum wage along with some business groups, called the unions’ claim “complete and utter nonsense.” Republicans senators never had any conversation with Walmart on the …

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IN 2005, SAM ALLISON, a Tennessee housepainter in his 30s, arrived at Daniel Hoover Children’s Village, an orphanage outside Monrovia, Liberia. He’d come to adopt three children, but ended up with four: five-year-old Cherish; her nine-year-old brother, Isaiah; their 13-year-old sister, CeCe, who had taken care of them for years; and Engedi, a sickly infant whom Sam and an adoption broker had retrieved from “deep in the bush.” The older children’s father had sent them …

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Hundreds of British Asians will gather in Parliament Square on Tuesday to urge MPs to introduce legal protection for those from traditionally lower-caste backgrounds.

A coalition of community groups, human rights organisations and politicians has been campaigning for a change in the law that would make it an offence for people to discriminate on the grounds of caste.

A report on the issue commissioned by the government three years ago estimated that there were between 50,000 and …

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From the homeowner who died fighting a foreclosure based on a typo to the family evicted at gunpoint at 3am, there is no shortage of heartbreaking stories of improper evictions. But while victims of wrongful foreclosures are frequently too small to find justice, the banks perpetuating the crimes against them remain far too big to be held accountable. The most recent entry in the “banks got bailed out, we got sold out” saga is the …

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BEIJING — A Chinese magazine’s report on abuses at a notorious labor camp is giving reformers added ammunition in a campaign to abolish a part of the penal system that China’s government says needs change.

The report this week in Lens magazine documents the long hours worked by female inmates at the Masanjia labor camp and the punishments for breaking rules or not meeting production quotas for cutting fabric, making button holes, sewing and ironing clothes …

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There are certain facts of life reflected by the FY 2014 Obama budget proposal: first, anything really worth having is going to be hard to get; and, the regrettable corollary — some things you don’t want are a lot closer to reality.

There are new and even historic anti-poverty proposals in this budget. But the better they are, the more they fall into the “hard to get” category. On the other hand, Social Security cuts in …

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War on Whistleblowers, a documentary by Brave New Foundation, premieres this week in Washington, D.C., and New York City. The film explores whistleblowing in concept and practice, and profiles five men in recent years who have suffered great loss to expose wrongdoing and corruption in the American deep state.

The documentary moves at a thoughtful pace, and introduces viewers to the surprisingly profound dilemma that would-be whistleblowers face, and the hard path that follows once the …

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Summer ice is melting at a faster rate in the Antarctic peninsula than at any time in the last 1,000 years, new research has shown.

The evidence comes from a 364-metre ice core containing a record of freezing and melting over the previous millennium.

Layers of ice in the core, drilled from James Ross Island near the northern tip of the peninsula, indicate periods when summer snow on the ice cap thawed and then refroze.

By measuring the …

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On the morning of May 3, 2010, three agents of the Food and Drug Administration descended upon the Houston office of Cetero Research, a firm that conducted research for drug companies worldwide.

Lead agent Patrick Stone, now retired from the FDA, had visited the Houston lab many times over the previous decade for routine inspections. This time was different. His team was there to investigate a former employee’s allegation that the company had tampered with records …

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