Politics

  Beirut / AFP Fighting raging between rival extremist rebel factions to control a key opposition stronghold near Damascus since late last month has killed more than 300 fighters, a monitor said on Sunday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the clashes in Eastern Ghouta pitted Jaish Al-Islam faction, which has been taking part in peace talks in Geneva, against ...

  Baghdad / AFP Suicide attackers broke into a gas plant north of Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least seven people and setting fire to gas tanks, officials said. The attack on the Taji plant, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of the capital, took place at around 6 am (0300 GMT). Eight suicide bombers broke into the gas plant ...

  Ankara/ AFP Members of Turkey’s right-wing MHP party were prevented from holding a congress on Sunday aimed at unseating longtime leader Devlet Bahceli and recovering ground lost to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party. Dissidents from the Nationalist Movement Party launched a campaign to oust Bahceli, 68, after a general election in November in which the party shed half its support—taking ...

  Jerusalem / AFP Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he told the French foreign minister that Paris’s support of a UNESCO resolution on Jerusalem cast doubt on the impartiality of a peace initiative it is promoting. “I told him that the scandalous resolution accepted at UNESCO with France’s support, that does not recognise the bond of thousands of ...

  Washington / AFP US authorities and Internet giants are boosting attempts to counter the IS group’s online propaganda, though it is unclear how effective these efforts are in hampering the extremists’ public-relations machine. With calls to holy war and highly produced videos of IS fighters in battle or killing captives, the IS group has long used the Internet and ...

  Jeddah / AFP US Secretary of State John Kerry held talks in Saudi Arabia on Sunday to secure its support ahead of a potential showdown with Russia at talks on the Syrian conflict. After his Saudi meetings, Kerry was due to fly to Vienna which this week will host the international contact groups engaged in efforts to halt fighting ...

  LAREDO / AP A charter bus headed to a casino crashed in far South Texas, killing eight people and injuring about 40 in a one-vehicle rollover, officials said. Webb County spokesman Larry Sanchez said seven people died at the scene on US Highway 83 north of Laredo, the Laredo Morning Times reported. An eighth person died later at a ...

  Proschim / AP German police said on Sunday they arrested 120 people following violent clashes between environmental activists and security personnel at anti-coal demonstrations in the east of the country. A police spokeswoman said the clashes occurred on Saturday in Lausitz when around 300 demonstrators forced their way into the Schwarze Pumpe coal-fired power station belonging to Swedish state-owned ...

Sydney / AFP Five young men face life behind bars after they were charged with terrorism offences over a plan to sail to Indonesia to join extremist groups in Syria, Australian police said. The men, aged in their twenties and early thirties and whose passports had been cancelled, included notorious Australian Islamic preacher Musa Cerantonio, who was detained in the ...

  Karang/ AFP Senegal and The Gambia will hold talks on Sunday aimed at ending a three-month border blockade that has created shortages of essential daily items on both sides of the frontier. Gambian authorities slapped a hundred-fold hike on fees for trucks entering its territory—which is completely surrounded by Senegal—without warning in February, infuriating Senegalese drivers who are now ...