Politics

  DUSHANBE / AP Officials from China’s traditionally Muslim region of Xinjiang say they will not interfere with fasting and other standard religious activities during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. The officials said at a news conference on Thursday that restaurants will be allowed to keep their own hours and activities in mosques and homes will be legally protected. ...

  Paris / AFP France will accept 400 refugees per month from Greece as part of the EU relocation deal it signed last year, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said on Thursday. “This week, as part of the relocation, 97 additional refugees have arrived in France coming from Greece and Italy,” Cazeneuve said in a statement, adding that another 253 were ...

  Washington / AP The US-led coalition fighting the IS group in Syria is trying to strangle it by cutting off a key supply route from Turkey. The Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led alliance, has just launched an offensive to capture the strategic northern town of Manbij with the help of coalition air strikes, 18 of them in the past ...

  Ahmedabad / AFP An Indian court convicted two dozen Hindus on Thursday over a massacre during religious riots 14 years ago when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was chief minister of Gujarat state. Sixty-nine Muslims were hacked and burnt to death as they sheltered at a residential complex in the city of Ahmedabad, in one of the single worst massacres ...

  Mogadishu / AFP An attack on a Mogadishu hotel by extremist gunmen has ended with at least 10 dead, Somalia’s security minister said on Thursday. Somali security forces had been battling the Shabaab fighters holed up inside the building since Wednesday evening when the assault began with a car bomb that tore the front off the six-storey Ambassador Hotel. ...

  Kuala Lumpur / AFP Families of six Malaysia Airlines crew members who were killed when flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine nearly two years ago filed a lawsuit on Thursday blaming the carrier for the tragedy. The suit accuses the airline of negligence and breach of contract and is believed to be the first filed against the company ...

  Paris / AFP Transport chaos hit France again on Wednesday, just nine days ahead of Euro 2016, as railway workers went on strike in the latest salvo of a months-long battle between the government and unions. Between a third and half of France’s trains were expected to grind to a halt, as workers from railway operator SNCF launched their ...

  BEIJING / AFP Chinese President Xi Jinping urged all parties to disputes on the Korean Peninsula to maintain calm and restraint in a meeting on Wednesday with a high-ranking North Korean envoy that appeared aimed at easing strains in the bilateral relationship. Xi’s meeting with Ri Su Yong, head of the ruling Workers Party of Korea’s international department, came ...

  Brussels / AFP The European Union on Wednesday formally warned Poland’s rightwing government that it must roll back its overhaul of the top Polish court, which critics warn endangers its independence. “We have decided to send a rule-of-law opinion to the Polish authorities,” European Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans said. “Despite our best efforts we have not been ...

  Manila / AFP Media groups expressed outrage on Wednesday at Philippine president-elect Rodrigo Duterte’s endorsement of killing corrupt journalists, warning his comments could incite more murders in a nation already one of the world’s most dangerous for reporters. Duterte, who won last month’s elections in a landslide after pledging to kill tens of thousands of criminals, told reporters on ...