Politics

  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 ...

  CLENDENIN / AP Offering his condolences, President Barack Obama approved federal aid for the West Virginia communities devastated by floods that have killed at least 24 people and rendered many more homeless. Obama’s signature on the federal disaster declaration lets residents in three counties get aid for temporary housing and home repairs, receive low-cost loans to cover uninsured property ...

  Tokyo / AFP An American base employee on Japan’s Okinawa was arrested for suspected drink-driving on Sunday, a week after tens of thousands of angry residents rallied in protest at crimes linked to the heavy US military presence. US military personnel are still under curfew after a suspected rape and murder by another employee of a military base. The ...

  Sydney / AFP One man was killed and several buildings torched in violence at a university in Papua New Guinea, its vice-chancellor said on Sunday, some two weeks after police opened fire on students in the capital. Students have been protesting against Prime Minister Peter O’Neill, who is being investigated for corruption. The undergraduate killed at the campus in ...