Politics

  Dubai / AFP Iran has warned Bahrain that it is fanning armed rebellion and “will pay the price” after an escalating crackdown on the country’s Shiite majority saw a top cleric stripped of citizenship. Washington and the United Nations have also raised concerns about moves by the Sunni-ruled kingdom against Shiites, who account for some 70 percent of the ...

  Kandahar / AFP Taliban on Tuesday kidnapped around two dozen people after pulling them off buses in southern Afghanistan, officials said, the latest in series of abductions on the country’s increasingly dangerous highways. The pre-dawn incident in Washer district of Helmand province comes a day after militants killed more than 20 people, including 14 Nepali security guards, in a ...

  Brussels / AFP EU ambassadors agreed to roll over damaging economic sanctions against Russia for six months in the absence of any progress on resolving the Ukraine conflict, European sources said on Tuesday. The measures target the oil, financial and defence sectors of the Russian economy and were first imposed after the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 ...

Seoul / AFP North Korea appears to be readying another test of a powerful, new medium-range missile, following a series of failures for a ballistic weapons programme that aspires to threaten the US mainland, multiple reports said on Tuesday. Japanese and South Korean media quoted official sources as saying North Korea looked to have deployed a so-called Musudan missile near ...

  London / AFP Britain’s referendum on European Union membership could go either way, polls indicated on Tuesday, after a day of tearful tributes to slain lawmaker Jo Cox whose brutal murder has overshadowed the campaign. The killing last week sparked accusations of hate-mongering in an already heated battle for votes before the momentous ballot on Thursday that could determine ...

  London / AFP With all the talk about European workers in the campaign ahead of Britain’s EU membership referendum on Thursday, many Poles living in the UK are concerned about what the future holds. The Polish community is estimated at 790,000 people, making up the largest number of about three million EU citizens living in Britain who have become ...

  Brussels / AFP A man with a fake suicide belt was arrested after a bomb scare at a shopping centre triggered a major anti-terror operation in central Brussels on Tuesday, federal prosecutors said. Belgium remains on a high state of alert after IS-claimed bomb attacks in March left 32 dead at the airport and on the metro. Tuesday’s incident ...

  Washington / AFP Venezuela asked the Organization of American States (OAS) to cancel a Thursday meeting on the country’s economic and political crisis in which its possible suspension could be discussed. In a letter to OAS General Secretary Luis Almagro, Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez asked the 34-country organization to scrap a session of its permanent council in Washington requested ...

  Kabul / AFP A busload of Nepali security guards were among 23 people killed in a string of bombings across Afghanistan on Monday, days after Washington expanded the US military’s authority to strike the insurgents. The Taliban claimed the first attack which killed 14 Nepali security guards working for the Canadian Embassy in Kabul in a massive blast that left ...

ISLAMABAD / AP Pakistan and Afghanistan held talks on Monday in Islamabad on last week’s deadly border clashes that killed two Afghan border guards and a Pakistani officer. A statement after the meeting said both nations emphasized the need to create a mechanism for consulting one another on border issues. The two neighbors last week traded several bouts of deadly ...