Politics

  ANKARA / AP A bus carrying schoolchildren, teachers and parents has plunged into an irrigation canal in southern Turkey, killing 14 people — six of them children, officials and reports said on Monday. Twenty-six other people were injured in the accident which occurred late Sunday as the bus was returning from a school trip to a national park and ...

  Halula / AFP US-backed fighters advanced to within five kilometres (three miles) of the IS group’s stronghold of Manbij in northern Syria, threatening a crucial extremist supply line. The assault by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) adds to the pressure on IS as it faces another offensive by Russian-backed regime troops in its bastion province of Raqa and in ...

  Kuwait City/ AFP Yemen’s warring parties have pledged to free all child prisoners but have failed to reach agreement on a wider release for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the UN envoy said on Monday. “In the prisoners committee, an agreement was made on the unconditional release of children,” Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said in a statement. There ...

  BAGHDAD / AFP The IS group has been shooting at civilians as they try to flee the fighting between Iraqi government forces and IS militants in the city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, an international aid organization says. A number of those fleeing civilians have been killed as they tried to cross the Euphrates River, the Norwegian Refugee Council, ...

  Ulan Bator / AFP US Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday warned Beijing against setting up an air defence identification zone (ADIZ) over the disputed South China Sea during a visit to Mongolia. Washington would consider the establishment of such a zone—which would require civilian aircraft to identify themselves to military controllers—”a provocative and destabilising act,” Kerry said in ...

  Berlin / AFP A German right-wing populist politician has attacked Chancellor Angela Merkel as a “dictator” who is trying to “replace the German people” with migrants, a Sunday newspaper reported. Alexander Gauland, of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, told a rally outside Berlin that Merkel’s liberal asylum policy was radically transforming the face of the country, the ...

Seoul / AFP North Korea hit back at the United States on Sunday for labelling it a money-laundering state, describing it as a “nonsensical” effort that only revealed the flaws of existing sanctions pushed by Washington. The US on Wednesday branded Pyongyang a “global money laundering concern”, aiming to lock the impoverished by nuclear-armed country out of the world financial ...

  FRESNO / AP Hillary Clinton’s savage takedown of Donald Trump in her recent foreign policy speech has her supporters fired up. As the likely Democratic nominee toured California, crowds burst into applause at the mere mention of Thursday’s speech, in which Clinton cast Trump as dangerously unqualified to be president. Supporters say they feel more confident and excited in the ...

  Puli Alam / AP Taliban gunmen stormed a court complex in a city south of Kabul on Sunday, killing at least seven people in the insurgents’ third so-called “revenge” attack for last month’s execution of Taliban-linked prisoners. The attack in Pul-i-Alam, capital of volatile Logar province, also left 23 prosecutors wounded as they were meeting to decide the fate of ...

  London / AFP It’s a snapshot from another political era. Forty-one years ago, in Britain’s last referendum on Europe, Margaret Thatcher hit the campaign trail clad in a woolly jumper emblazoned with a Union flag. But the 1975 poll, which saw Britain embrace membership of what was then the Common Market, has plenty in common with the current bitter and ...