Politics

  LONDON / AP President Barack Obama on Saturday urged the next generation of British leaders to give serious thought to how they solve problems, turning a light-hearted question about priorities for his successor into a treatise on his preference for diplomacy over military conflict. Obama said keeping US citizens safe is his top priority and he suggested that it ...

  Washington / AFP Eight members of one family, including a teenager, were shot dead in rural Ohio, just before gunmen killed five people in Georgia. In Ohio, seven bodies were found at three houses close to eachother and an eighth was later found at a separate site, Sheriff Charles Reader told reporters. The victims were “all adults except for ...

  Juba/ AFP South Sudan rebel chief Riek Machar eas expected to miss an international deadline on Saturday to return to the capital to take up the post of vice president, the government said, with his arrival now expected next week. UN chief Ban Ki-moon has urged Machar to return to Juba “without delay”, while the US, Britain and Norway—key ...

  Johannesburg / AFP The firebrand head of South Africa’s radical opposition Economic Freedom Fighters, Julius Malema, has warned he could seek to remove the government “through the barrel of a gun.” “We are not scared of the army. We are not scared to fight. We will fight,” he told the pan-Arab Al-Jazeera network in an interview to be broadcast ...

  Riyadh / AFP US President Barack Obama met Gulf leaders in Saudi Arabia on Thursday to push for an intensified campaign against the IS group, despite strains in ties with Washington. Making what is likely his final presidential visit to America’s historic allies, Obama posed for a summit photo with the six regional leaders, including Saudi King Salman, before ...

  JAKARTA / AP China has asked Indonesia to extradite four Uighur men in exchange for returning a graft fugitive recently arrested in Shanghai, the top Indonesian security minister said on Thursday. Coordinating Minister for Politics, Legal and Security Affairs Luhut Pandjaitan said Indonesia will allow China to question the men, who are serving prison sentences for collaborating with Indonesia’s ...

  Ankara / AFP Russia has kept a considerable military presence in conflict-torn Syria to bolster the regime of President Bashar Al Assad, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday. “Despite the announced partial withdrawal we see that Russia maintains a considerable military presence in support of the Assad regime in Syria,” he said at a press conference in Turkey. ...

  BEIJING / AP Pointing to stronger China-US cooperation on North Korea, a US envoy said on Thursday the two nations are united in their opposition to the North’s nuclear tests and worked together to develop the tough sanctions imposed in March. Sung Kim, the US government’s top envoy for North Korea, told reporters in Beijing that China took as ...

  Moscow / AFP The last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Thursday urged the West to stop isolating Russia and take a more “constructive” approach in response to President Vladimir Putin’s moves towards normalising relations. The 85-year-old who presided over the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War argued that Moscow has an “important and ...

  ANKARA /AP NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday efforts to stem the tide of migrants seeking the shores of Europe are working. Speaking at a press conference with Turkish Foreign Affairs Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in Ankara, the Turkish capital, Stoltenberg said the collective effort is “making a difference” and that the number of migrants crossing the Aegean Sea ...