ISLAMABAD -- A suicide blast hit a police truck on Wednesday in Quetta, the provincial capital of Pakistan's southwest Balochistan province, killing two people and leaving 24 others injured, a police official told Xinhua.

Deputy Inspector General of Quetta police Ghulam Azfar Mahesar told Xinhua that a suicide bomber exploded his explosive-laden rickshaw near a truck of the Balochistan constabulary in the Baleli area of Quetta. (Pakistan-Suicide Blast)

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JAKARTA -- Indonesia will appeal to the World Trade Organization's (WTO) ruling on a nickel ore trade dispute, in which the European Union sued Indonesia over its nickel ore export ban, President Joko Widodo said on Wednesday.

Indonesia issued a ban on nickel ore exports in 2020 for a downstream development program that provides more jobs and welfare for its people.

Regarding the export ban, the European Union filed a lawsuit and the WTO dispute settlement body ruled that Indonesia had violated the regulations. (Indonesia-WTO-Nickel Ore)

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DHAKA -- What is thought to be the world's largest remaining stockpile of the now-banned pesticide Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), left in Bangladesh's seaport city Chattogram for 37 years, has finally been removed.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) said on Wednesday here that it has supported the Bangladeshi government in disposing of the DDT safely and cleaning up the storage site in a complex international operation.

The final batch of repackaged DDT will be loaded onto a ship later this week and then the entire consignment will set sail for France where the waste will be incinerated at a specialist facility in the country, said FAO in a statement. (Bangladesh-DDT)

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WELLINGTON -- A New Zealand hospital has become the first in the world to use a single blood test to diagnose heart attacks in minutes instead of hours.

Saving the health system millions of dollars and getting patients treated faster, the fast, high-precision bedside troponin blood test is being rolled out in New Zealand hospitals, Health Minister Andrew Little said on Wednesday. (New Zealand-Blood Test-Heart Attack)

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BANGKOK -- Thailand's central bank on Wednesday decided to raise its key policy rate for a third straight time, by 0.25 percentage point, in an effort to balance efforts between easing inflation and supporting economic growth.

The Bank of Thailand (BOT) monetary policy committee voted unanimously to raise the policy rate from 1 percent to 1.25 percent, effective immediately. (Thailand-Economy-Monetary Policy) Enditem

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