Politics

  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 ...

  TEHRAN/ AP Iran on Sunday rejected an annual US State Department report that called it the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. State TV quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari as saying the report is “false” and further evidence of the “lack of credibility of reports by the US State Department.” As in many previous years, the report identified ...

  BAGHDAD/ AP In March, a senior commander with the IS group was driving through northern Syria on orders to lead militants in the fighting there when a drone blasted his vehicle to oblivion. The killing of Abu Hayjaa Al Tunsi, a Tunisian extremist, sparked a panicked hunt within the group’s ranks for spies who could have tipped off the ...

  MANILA / AP The Philippine president-elect has encouraged the public to help him in his war against crime, urging citizens with guns to shoot and kill drug dealers who resist arrest and fight back in their neighbourhoods. In a nationally televised speech late Saturday, Rodrigo Duterte told a huge crowd in the southern city of Davao celebrating last month’s ...

Beirut / AFP US-backed Syrian rebels advancing on IS group fighters in the strategic northern town of Manbij have progressed to within five kilometres of the extremist bastion, a monitor said on Sunday. Supported by air strikes by the US-led coalition battling IS in Syria and Iraq, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias launched an ...

Chittagong / AFP Suspected militants killed the wife of a senior anti-terror officer in the Bangladesh city of Chittagong on Sunday, the latest attack thought carried out by local extremists, police said. Three unidentified men stabbed and then shot Mahmuda Begum in the head as she walked her son to a school bus stop near her home, Chittagong Metropolitan Police ...

  New Delhi / Tribune News Service India is widely expected to be the 35th member of Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) this week, a move that will boost the country’s efforts to export and import missile technology subject to non-proliferation rules from friendly nations. If made partner in the regime, a precursor to being admitted into the Nuclear Suppliers’ ...

  Singapore / AFP Chinese construction on a South China Sea islet claimed by the Philippines would prompt “actions being taken” by the United States and other nations, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter warned on Saturday. Speaking at a security summit in Singapore, Carter said Beijing risks building a “Great Wall of self-isolation” with its military expansion in the contested ...

  Niamey / AFP Thirty-two troops have been killed in a clash with Boko Haram extremists on Niger’s border with Nigeria, Niger’s defence ministry said on Saturday. “Hundreds of assailants” attacked a military post at Bosso on Friday evening, it said in a statement that gave a “provisional toll” of 30 Nigerien and two Nigerian soldiers killed and 67 wounded. ...