Politics

  Gaza City / AFP Israeli aircraft hit two Hamas targets in Gaza early on Saturday in response to rocket fire as the worst flare-up of violence since a 2014 war entered a fourth day. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the rocket launch and most such fire since 2014 has been carried out by fringe extremist groups but ...

  d r congo / Bloomberg The Democratic Republic of Congo said the developer for the first phase of the $100 billion Grand Inga hydropower project will be selected by August for construction to start by June next year. Two of the three groups that answered Congo’s 2010 call for bids remain in the running, Bruno Kapandji, head of the ...

  Astana / AFP US Secretary of State John Kerry warned Syria’s Bashar Al Assad of “repercussions” if his regime flouts a new truce under negotiation, as talks to halt the violence shifted to Berlin on Wednesday. Russia has said a new ceasefire to halt fighting in Aleppo could be imminent, with Syria’s divided northern city hit by a wave of ...

  Brussels/ AFP The EU on Wednesday gave conditional backing to visa-free travel for Turks under a migrant deal and unveiled new asylum rules including fines for countries that refuse their share of refugees. In its latest bid to tackle the biggest migration crisis since World War II, the European Commission proposed making countries pay a “solidarity contribution” of 250,000 ...

  STUTTGART / AP The combat death of an American Navy SEAL in Iraq shows that despite recent gains against the IS in Iraq, “this fight is far from over,” US Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Wednesday. Carter spoke at the outset of a closed-door meeting in Germany with his counterparts from 11 countries contributing to the military campaign against ...

  Kuwait City / AP Yemen’s warring parties are to resume face-to-face peace talks on Wednesday after a three-day break triggered by a walkout by the government delegation, the United Nations said. The negotiations, which began on April 21, broke off on Sunday after the government delegation quit in protest at the apparent surrender of one of the few loyalist bases ...

  Mukalla / AFP Ten days after Gulf-backed forces drove Al-Qaeda out of the Yemeni port city of Mukalla, the signs of their harsh year-long rule are still everywhere for relieved residents to see. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula took advantage of the chaos of fighting between pro-government forces and Iran-backed rebels to expand its control in southern Yemen, seizing ...

  INDIANAPOLIS / AP Once dismissed as a fringe contender, businessman Donald Trump now is all but certain to lead the Republican Party into the fall presidential campaign against Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton — a stunning political triumph for a first-time candidate whose appeal to frustrated voters was widely underestimated. Trump’s victory in Indiana on Tuesday and Ted Cruz’s abrupt ...

  Jakarta / AFP Indonesia is preparing for a new round of executions, police said on Wednesday, around a year after Jakarta sparked global outrage by putting seven foreign drug convicts to death by firing squad. Officials recently started getting ready after an order from the attorney-general’s office, which oversees executions, said Central Java police spokesman Aloysius Lilik Darmanto. He ...

  Kuala Lumpur / AFP Malaysian authorities are searching for three foreigners who went missing in waters near the Philippines where a spate of recent kidnappings have taken place, a coast guard official said on Wednesday. The official cautioned there was so far no cause to suspect the abduction of the foreigners, who went missing late Monday along with a ...