Politics

  Mumbai / AFP Eight people were killed when a fire gutted a pharmacy in India’s financial capital Mumbai on Thursday, police said. One other person was seriously injured in the blaze, which broke out early Thursday morning, Mumbai police spokesman Ashok Dudhe said. “The primary reason for the fire seems to be a short circuit. But officials will have ...

  Brussels / AFP European leaders met on Wednesday without Britain for the first time in 40 years to prepare for life after the Brexit bombshell, as the race began to succeed Prime Minister David Cameron. Highlighting the seismic shock from last week’s referendum, one person who was in Brussels however was Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, “utterly determined” to ...

  Ireland / AP Hugh Maguire can’t believe the British really did it. The Northern Ireland farmer, like many residents along the United Kingdom’s virtually unmarked land border with the Republic of Ireland, faces the risk of financial ruin if Britain proceeds with plans to exit the European Union. EU farm subsidies provide most of his income from highland pastures ...

  Mongolia / AFP Mongolians went to the polls across their sprawling, sparsely-populated country on Wednesday as it struggles to benefit from its vast natural resources amid disputes over foreign investment and slumping demand from neighbouring China. Squeezed between Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Communist China, Mongolia prides itself on its democracy, but voters expressed frustration with the country’s poor governance ...

  Rome / AFP Italy is to begin removing the remains of hundreds of people from a sunken migrant boat after raising it from the Mediterranean seabed and towing it to Sicily, the navy announced Wednesday. The boat’s sinking off Libya in April 2015 left as many as 800 people dead in the worst maritime tragedy in the Mediterranean since ...

  Istanbul / AFP Turkey on Wednesday pointed the finger of blame at IS extremists after a triple suicide bombing and gun attack at Istanbul’s main international airport killed at least 41 people, including foreigners. Witnesses described scenes of terror and panic on Tuesday evening as the attackers opened fire and then blew themselves up at the entrance to the ...

  Sydney / AFP A firebomb attack outside an Australian mosque while worshippers were at prayer was condemned on Wednesday by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, with one Islamic leader calling it a “hate crime”. No one was injured in Tuesday night’s blast which destroyed a car parked outside a mosque and Islamic college in the Perth suburb of Thornlie. “It ...

  Beirut / AFP US-backed rebels advanced on a key IS group supply line between Syria and Iraq overnight, seizing a small airbase near the border, a monitor said on Wednesday. The New Syrian Army said the operation—launched on Tuesday—is aimed at the severing the supply line through the Albu Kamal crossing that links areas under IS control in eastern ...

  Washington, / AFP South Korea, Japan and the United States held an unprecedented trilateral missile defence exercise, aimed at countering the growing threat from nuclear-armed North Korea which denounced it as a “military provocation.” The drill in waters off Hawaii came less than a week after North Korea flight-tested a powerful new medium-range ballistic missile that leader Kim Jong-Un ...

  Seoul/ AFP A high-profile South Korean politician and presidential hopeful resigned as the head of his new opposition party that has been rocked by a bribery scandal. Ahn Cheol-Soo, a former IT software tycoon, stepped down as co-leader of the People’s Party, amid allegations that its members received tens of thousand of dollars in kickbacks from two local companies ...