Politics

  Port Harcourt/ AFP Five foreign construction workers kidnapped last week with two Nigerian colleagues after their vehicle was attacked and driver killed have been released, officials said on Monday, with two suffering serious injuries. The commissioner of police in Cross River state, Jimoh Ozi-Obeh, said that the men, including three Australians, a New Zealander and a South African, had ...

  BEIJING / AP China’s premier called on Monday for joint efforts to restore global economic confidence following the shock of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union. Last week’s referendum “has had an obvious impact on international financial markets. We are seeing increasing uncertainties in the world economy,” said Li Keqiang, speaking at the World Economic Forum in the ...

  BAGHDAD / AP A senior Iraqi commander declared that the city of Fallujah was “fully liberated” from IS group militants on Sunday, after a more than monthlong military operation. Iraqi troops have entered the northwestern Al Julan neighborhood, the last area of Fallujah to remain under IS control, the head of the counterterrorism forces in the operation, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Wahab ...

  SANAA / AP Yemeni security and health officials say two days of fierce fighting between Shiite rebels and forces loyal to the internationally recognized government has killed at least 55 people from both sides. The officials said Sunday that 70 people were wounded in the fighting over the past 48 hours in the provinces of Taiz, Bayda and Marib. ...

  BEIRUT / AFP At least 82 people including 58 civilians were killed in Russian and regime air strikes on an IS group-held area of eastern Syria, a monitor said Sunday in a new toll. “Three Russian and Syrian regime air raids on the region of Al-Quriyah, southeast of Deir Ezzor city, killed 58 civilians,” the Syrian Observatory for Human ...

Tehran / AFP Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards said it killed five armed rebels in recent clashes along its border with Iraqi Kurdistan, state media reported. A statement from the Guards, published late Saturday by official news agency IRNA, said “five armed rebels linked to counter-revolutionary groups” were killed on Friday night. It did not give the name of the rebel ...

  Bloomberg Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said her government started work on legislation for a new referendum on independence after the UK. as a whole decided to quit the European Union while Scotland voted to remain. Speaking after an emergency meeting of her cabinet in Edinburgh on Saturday, Sturgeon said she will also be seeking talks with European leaders ...

  NEW DELHI / AP India expressed disappointment on Sunday with China for raising procedural hurdles to the South Asian country joining the 48-nation group controlling access to sensitive nuclear technology. Its membership application was not approved at the Nuclear Suppliers Group meeting last week in Seoul, South Korea, and External Affairs Ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said that from India’s ...

  Gaza City / AFP In her modest home in the Gaza Strip, Sahar Sherif’s family watches as she ladles out a broth of meat and vegetables for a rare heart-warming meal. For just a month of the year, a soup kitchen in the Palestinian enclave is offering struggling families like Sherif’s a welcome break from daily worries about where ...

  Ankara / AFP Turkey has condemned as “very unfortunate” Pope Francis’s declaration that the mass killings of Armenians a century ago by Ottoman forces amounted to a genocide, saying it bore traces of “the mentality of the Crusades.” “It is not an objective statement that conforms with reality,” Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canlikli said late on Saturday, quoted by ...