Politics

  Nice, France / AFP French investigators arrested two more people on Sunday as they pieced together details about the motives and planning of the Tunisian who rammed a truck into a crowd in an IS-claimed attack that killed 84. Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel staked out the Nice promenade with his rented truck twice in the two days before he smashed the ...

  Paris / AFP UNESCO on Sunday listed Franco-Swiss architect Le Corbusier’s works — including the Indian city of Chandigarh which he planned in the 1950s— among its World Heritage Sites. The decision was announced as the World Heritage Committee meeting in Istanbul resumed for a day on Sunday, after being suspended a day earlier due to an abortive putsch bid ...

  Washington / AFP An overwhelming majority of Americans think the next president should place “major” focus on improving US race relations, which most see as “generally bad.” The Washington Post/ABC News poll released on Saturday was taken shortly after the mass shooting of white police officers by a black sniper that followed two high-profile shooting deaths of black men at ...

  Aleppo / AFP Opposition-controlled parts of Syria’s battered northern city Aleppo came under total siege on Sunday, after government forces severed the last route out of the east. Beleaguered rebels have failed to thwart a major Russian-backed army offensive around Aleppo city, which has been devastated by the country’s five-year conflict. On Sunday, regime fighters descended on the Castello ...

Hanoi, Vietnam / AFP Scores of activists were detained in Vietnam’s capital on Sunday as they gathered to protest against China after it rejected a recent international ruling that dismissed its claims to much of the South China Sea. Anti-Chinese sentiment runs deep in communist Vietnam but the country’s authoritarian rulers move swiftly to tamp down expressions of public anger, ...

  Multan / AFP The brother of a murdered Pakistani celebrity said Sunday he is “not embarrassed” to have killed her, as Qandeel Baloch’s death reignited polarising calls for action against the “epidemic” of honour killings. The strangling of Baloch, judged as infamous by many in deeply conservative Muslim Pakistan for selfies and videos that by Western standards would appear ...

  ISTANBUL / Reuters Forces loyal to Turkey’s government fought on Saturday to crush the last remnants of a military coup attempt which collapsed after crowds answered President Tayyip Erdogan’s call to take to the streets and dozens of rebels abandoned their tanks. One hundred and sixty-one people were killed, including many civilians, after a faction of the armed forces ...

  London / AFP A section of the Turkish military, the second-largest army in NATO after the US’, caught the world off guard on Friday by staging an attempted coup. The move stunned Turkey observers, who believed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party had brought the secular-minded army to heel. Acting army chief General Umit ...

  WASHINGTON / AFP US President Barack Obama was huddling with top national security advisers in the White House Situation Room on Saturday to address the destabilizing coup attempt in Turkey. The government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan appears to have repelled the plot, but the situation remained fraught and tensions between Washington and Ankara appeared to be growing. In a ...

  Nice, France / AFP The IS group claimed responsibility on Saturday for the truck massacre in Nice which France said was “a new kind of attack,” as it faced hard questions over security failures. In a statement via its Amaq news service, IS said one of its “soldiers” carried out Thursday night’s attack “in response to calls to target ...