Politics

  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 ...

  Beijing / AFP The size of China’s workforce may decline by as much as 23 percent by 2050, a government official said, as the population of the world’s second-largest economy rapidly ages. China’s working age population, defined as those between the ages of 16 and 59, peaked in 2011 and would soon “experience a process of sharp decline”, particularly after ...

  Munich, Germany / AFP The lone teenager who shot dead nine people in a gun rampage in Munich was “obsessed” with mass killers such as Norwegian rightwing fanatic Anders Behring Breivik and had no links to the IS group, police said on Saturday. Europe reacted in shock to the third attack on the continent in just over a week, after ...

  Kabul / AFP IS extremist group claimed responsibility for twin explosions on Saturday that ripped through crowds of Shiite Hazaras in Kabul, killing at least 64 people and wounding 265 others in their first major attack in the Afghan capital. The bombings, apparently aimed at sowing sectarian discord in a country well known for Shia-Sunni harmony, came as thousands of ...

  Washington / AFP Hillary Clinton tapped Tim Kaine, a popular Spanish-speaking senator from the swing state of Virginia, to be her running mate in the White House showdown against Donald Trump. The pick comes three days before the start of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, where Clinton — and now Kaine — will be elevated as the nominees ...

  Vientiane, Laos / AFP Staunch China ally Cambodia is preventing Southeast Asia from reaching a consensus on the South China Sea after an international tribunal rejected Beijing’s territorial claims to the waters, a diplomat said on Saturday. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is meeting in Laos for the first time since the UN-backed tribunal ruled earlier this month ...