Politics

  Jerusalem / AFP A key party in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s newly expanded right-wing coalition threatened to bring it down on Sunday over a demand related to the military. The Jewish Home party, whose leader Naftali Bennett is a political rival to Netanyahu, said it would vote against the expanded coalition in parliament if its demand was not met. ...

  Bloomberg French unions seeking to overturn an unpopular labor law are set to intensify their protests as the government shows no sign of giving in after a week of strikes and blockades caused gas stations in many regions of the country to run dry. By the end of this week, the national railroad, the Paris metro, ports and air ...

  LONDON / AP Senior Conservative Party members in Britain have intensified their attacks on Prime Minister David Cameron with an open letter accusing him of misleading the public over immigration. Former London Mayor Boris Johnson and Justice Secretary Michael Gove used a Sunday Times letter to say Cameron’s goal of lowering immigration cannot be achieved while Britain remains in ...

New Delhi / AFP Police said on Sunday they arrested five Indians accused of assaulting Africans in New Delhi, after African diplomats urged the Indian government to ensure the safety of their nationals living in the country. A Delhi deputy police commissioner Ishwar Singh said altercations and scuffles took place on Thursday night after locals became offended by Africans playing ...

  Kiev / AP Seventeen people died when a makeshift home for elderly people outside the Ukrainian capital Kiev caught fire in the early hours of Sunday, the latest tragedy to shake the conflict-riven country. The fire tore through the two-storey shelter for the elderly which is in the village of Litochky, located some 50 kilometres (31 miles) north of ...

  Caracas / AFP Venezuelan officials and opposition foes have held separate secret meetings in the Dominican Republic with a group of ex-world leaders seeking a way out of political crisis, officials said, as an ex-military reserve leader was shot dead. Representatives of both sides of Venezuela’s political standoff met former Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, former Dominican ...

Vienna / AFP Austria’s far-right is probing “countless” cases of fraud in last week’s presidential election that saw its candidate lose by a narrow margin, the party chief was quoted as saying on Sunday. “We are going to get the countless indications (of irregularities) looked at by an independent, neutral body and then decide” whether to challenge the result, Freedom ...

  WASHINGTON / AP It started with Mexicans being publicly accused by presidential candidate Donald Trump of being criminals and rapists. It escalated to ejections, to sucker punches, to pepper spray. And now violence and strife seems to be a commonplace occurrence out on the campaign trail. As the 2016 presidential campaign turns toward the rapidly diversifying West, it has ...

  Tokyo / AFP US forces in Okinawa are to be put under night-time curfew for a month following the suspected rape and murder of a woman by a former US marine, officials said on Saturday. The announcement, part of a one-month “period of unity and mourning” comes after US President Barack Obama expressed his “deepest regrets” over the killing. ...

  Sydney / AFP Violence erupted in Australia’s second biggest city on Saturday after two opposing immigration rallies clashed in the streets, with police arresting seven people. Victoria state police condemned the behaviour of both anti-racism and anti-immigration demonstrators involved in the melees in the Melbourne suburb of Coburg. Hundreds of police attempted to keep the groups apart, and were ...