Politics

London / AFP A coroner on Wednesday ordered a re-examination of the deaths of 21 people in the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings, one of Britain’s worst ever terror attacks, after claims that police failed to act on two warnings. Coroner Louise Hunt ordered new inquests for the victims killed in the twin attacks, which were widely blamed on the Provisional ...

  Berlin / AFP Germany’s parliament votes Thursday on a resolution that qualifies the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces as “genocide”, despite a strong warning from Turkey. Drawn up by the ruling left-right coalition and the opposition Greens, the resolution entitled “Remembrance and commemoration of the genocide of Armenians and other Christian minorities in 1915 and 1916” also carries ...

  Kuala Lumpur / AFP Half a century after they died, the bodies of 32 Australian soldiers and their dependents, many of whom were killed in the Vietnam War, were returned home from Malaysia on Tuesday. In a sombre ceremony, their flag-draped coffins were loaded onto Australian airforce planes by a military guard of honour as a bugle sounded the ...

  Dhaka / AFP A Bangladesh court on Tuesday sentenced to death six suspected militants for a deadly bank robbery last year, as authorities crack down on local hardliners following a wave of killings. Dhaka judge SM Quddus Zaman convicted and sentenced the men over the robbery, which raised fears at the time of local groups raising funds to finance ...

  CAMP TARIQ / AFP Iraqi forces battling their way into Fallujah repelled a four-hour attack by the IS group in the city’s south on Tuesday, a day after first moving into the southern edges of the militant-held city with the help of US-led coalition airstrikes. Also Tuesday, a leading aid group raised alarm over the unfolding “human catastrophe” in ...

  Kunduz / AP The Taliban killed at least 16 people on Tuesday and kidnapped dozens of others after pulling them off buses in northern Afghanistan, officials said, the latest assault since the insurgents named a new leader last week. The Taliban have so far not commented on the incident in Aliabad district in the volatile province of Kunduz, where ...

  Geneva / AFP More than 2,500 people have died trying to make the perilous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe so far in 2016, the UN said Tuesday, a sharp jump from the same period last year. At the same time some 204,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean to the continent since January, a figure that has ...

  BEIRUT / AP A wave of late night airstrikes pummeled the northwestern Syrian city of Idlib, killing at least 23 people, wounding dozens and trapping several under the rubble of their homes, opposition activists said on Tuesday. At least seven children were among those killed in the strikes, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group ...

  Kiev / AFP Ukraine’s defiant pilot Nadiya Savchenko sang the national anthem on Tuesday in a strident first appearance in parliament since her release in a prisoner swap with Russia last week. The 35-year-old member of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s populist party strode to the podium draped in the flag of Ukraine and holding one of Crimea at ...

  LUXEMBOURG / AP A senior adviser to the European Court of Justice says European Union economic sanctions imposed on Russian companies are valid in the main under the EU’s common security and defense policy. Advocate General Melchior Wathelet issued the opinion on Tuesday in response to a challenge the Russian oil and gas producer Rosneft filed before a British ...