Politics

  Antananarivo / AFP A house fire during a party in central Madagascar killed 38 people including 16 children as the blaze ripped through a thatched roof, police said Monday. The victims—the youngest only six months old—were trapped inside the house in Ambalavato village of Ikalamavony district in the rural centre of the island. The party-goers, including several relatives of the ...

  Ansbach / AFP A failed Syrian asylum seeker who blew himself up outside a German music festival had made a video pledging allegiance to the IS group, in the second attack claimed by the extremists in Germany in a week. The 27-year-old assailant wounded 15 people, four of them seriously, near a cafe in the southern city of Ansbach on ...

Kabul / AFP Civilian casualties in Afghanistan soared to a record high in the first half of 2016, the UN said on Monday, with children in particular paying a heavy price for growing insecurity as the conflict escalates. The UN report, which comes days after the deadliest attack in Kabul since the Taliban were ousted from power in 2001, cited ...

  Istanbul / Bloomberg Turkey’s government is setting up an inner cabinet to oversee the implementation of the state of emergency it declared after last week’s botched coup, ramping up the effort to purge the influence of its accused mastermind from all walks of Turkish life. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim will chair the council composed of ministers including justice, interior, ...

  Kathmandu / AFP Nepal’s K.P. Sharma Oli resigned as prime minister on Sunday, minutes before facing a no-confidence motion in parliament he was certain to lose, plunging the impoverished nation into fresh turmoil. His political rivals, former Maoist rebels, called for the vote against Oli after they deserted his fragile ruling coalition, accusing him of reneging on past deals and ...

  Baghdad / AFP A suicide bombing claimed by the IS group killed at least 15 people in a Shiite area of northern Baghdad on Sunday, security and medical officials said. The bombing, which struck near a checkpoint in the Kadhimiyah area, home to a major Shiite shrine, also wounded at least 29 people, the officials said. IS issued a statement ...

  Miami / AFP Tim Kaine made a big splash in his first appearance as Hillary Clinton’s running mate for the White House, savaging Donald Trump’s foreign policy ideas as dangerous and wowing a Miami crowd with fluent Spanish. Kaine, a 58-year-old senator from the battleground state of Virginia, won many a cheer and laugh and frequent applause as he ...

  Munich / AFP The teenager who shot dead nine people at a Munich shopping mall spent a year planning the rampage but selected his victims at random, officials said on Sunday. Details are emerging of gunman David Ali Sonboly as a depressed 18-year-old who was obsessed with mass killings and had long struggled with his mental health. Friday’s shooting ...

  Istanbul / AFP Turkey pushed on Saturday with a sweeping crackdown against suspects accused of taking part in the failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, extending police powers to hold people in detention and shuttering over 1,000 private schools. A week after renegade soldiers tried to oust him with guns, tanks and F16s, Erdogan’s government has rounded up ...

  Chennai / AFP India on Saturday stepped up a major search operation for an air force plane that disappeared over the Bay of Bengal the day before with 29 people on board, as the defence minister headed to the region. The AN-32 military transport plane was on a routine flight from the southern city of Chennai to Port Blair, capital ...