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Brussels / AFP NATO launched on Thursday an unprecedented naval mission in the Aegean Sea to tackle people smugglers taking migrants and refugees from the Turkish coast, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday. The move follows a request this week by alliance members Germany, Greece and Turkey for assistance in tackling Europe’s biggest migrant crisis since World War II. ...

Bangkok / AFP Thailand’s pro-democracy “Red Shirt” movement will vote against a new junta-scripted charter in a looming referendum, their leader said on Thursday, a move that could deepen the country’s political impasse. The political play comes a day after the military, which seized power two years ago from a civilian government, said it will hold a plebiscite on their ...

Sydney / AFP Australia said on Thursday it will “carefully consider” if it can help the orphans of an IS extremist and their Sydney-born mother, who both reportedly died in Syria, warning the children could pose a threat later in life. Tara Nettleton, whose husband KhaledSharrouf made headlines in 2014 when he posted an image on Twitter of his then ...

NEW DELHI / WAM His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, held on Thursday formal talks with His Excellency Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, where the two leaders discussed ways to promote bilateral cooperation. The two leaders agreed that promoting bilateral cooperation would ...

New Delhi / WAM His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, visited on Thursday the Raj Ghat, the memorial site of Mahatma Gandhi in New Delhi, accompanied by Dharmendra Pradhan, India’s Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas. His Highness Sheikh Mohamed observed a ...

Abu Dhabi / WAM On the occasion of the official visit to India by His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, H.H. Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, Foreign Minister, has reflected on the deep ties that bind the UAE and India, in an article published in ...

Ankara / AFP Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday threatened to send the millions of refugees in Turkey to European Union (EU) member states, as NATO agreed to deploy ships to the Aegean Sea to ease the migrant crisis. In a speech in Ankara, Erdogan stepped up his denunciations of Western policy in the refugee crisis, confirming he had ...

MOSCOW / AFP Russia’s defence ministry on Thursday accused the United States of bombing the Syrian city of Aleppo after the Pentagon said Moscow’s air strikes had destroyed two hospitals in the city. Moscow furiously denied the US claim, charging in return that Washington had sent ground-attack planes to bombard Aleppo, an allegation the US said was a “fabrication”. “Just ...

Bloomberg If David Cameron leaves next week’s European Union summit with a deal to overhaul the terms of Britain’s membership, many of his counterparts will breathe a sigh of relief —and dig out their own wishlists. As populist and anti-EU forces surge across the region, the prime minister’s ultimately successful strategy of issuing demands for change and threatening to leave ...

Berlin / AFP Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi urged Kurdistan on Thursday to drop any plans for independence, criticising a proposed statehood referendum and warning the autonomous region would not prosper on its own. Abadi also highlighted the economic crisis Iraq faces, saying that oil revenues had fallen by 85 percent compared to two years before—a major challenge made ...