Politics

  BAGHDAD / Reuters Hundreds rallied in central Baghdad in support of powerful Shi’ite Muslim cleric Moqtada Al Sadr who has threatened to call mass protests if the prime minister fails to name a new cabinet to fight corruption by Tuesday. People in Tahrir Square on Sunday said many more would join them if Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi did ...

  Tehran / AFP Iran used its annual Army Day parade on Sunday to showcase parts of a long-awaited air defence system ordered from Russia, a move likely to irk critics of the arms deal. The S-300 system has been on order since 2007 but Russia postponed the sale three years later after the UN Security Council passed a resolution ...

  Addis Ababa/ AFP Armed men from South Sudan have killed around 140 people and kidnapped a number of others in a cross-border raid into Ethiopia, the Ethiopian government said on Sunday. Ethnic Murle gunmen “attacked near Gambella and killed close to 140 people. They also abducted some of them,” Ethiopian foreign ministry spokesman Tewolde Muluteg said. The Murle, a ...

Kano / AFP Nigeria’s security services have hailed the arrest of the leader of the Boko Haram splinter group Ansaru, Khalid Al Barnawi, saying it will lead to them to other senior commanders. “The arrest of Barnawi is a huge success and will have a profound effect on counter-terrorism operations in Nigeria and beyond,” one security source said. “He is ...

BRASILIA / AP Separated by only a boulevard, two rival camps of demonstrators in Brazil’s capital underscore the sharp ideological divide that is playing out in Congress as lawmakers debate whether to oust the president. On one side of Brasilia’s showcase Eixo Monumental, which cuts through the center of city and dead ends at Congress, several thousand supporters of embattled ...

Lesbos / AFP Pope Francis received an emotional welcome on Saturday on the Greek island of Lesbos during a visit aimed at showing solidarity with migrants fleeing war and poverty, a small group of whom he hopes to bring back to the Vatican. The pontiff’s landmark visit comes amid controvery over a deal last month to end Europe’s refugee crisis ...

Binghamton / AFP What do a New York lawyer, a business owner who calls himself a left-leaning Republican and a construction worker who elected Barack Obama have in common? They’re voting for Donald Trump. None of them live on the breadline. They share surprisingly varied opinions. Yet they are profoundly frustrated—with the economy, with career politicians and with perceptions of ...

  Kumamoto / AFP Scores of people were feared buried alive on Saturday after two powerful quakes hit southern Japan a day apart, killing at least 32 people, and as a forecast storm threatened more devastating landslides. Homes, roads and railway lines were swept away when huge hillsides collapsed, as thousands of tonnes of mud was dislodged by the thunderous ...

Havana / AFP Cuba’s communist party gathers on Saturday for a rare party congress less than a month after US President Barack Obama’s historic visit, but Cubans eager for change are likely to be disappointed. Held every five years, party congresses normally are the main political event in a one-party system like Cuba’s that brooks no dissent. The last one in ...

  Brussels / AFP Brussels airport will fully re-open in June, its chief executive said, after suffering extensive damage when two suicide bombers blew themselves up in the departures hall last month killing 16. “We will be 100 percent operational again in June,” Brussels airport chief executive Arnaud Feist told Belgian newspaper Le Soir published Saturday. “But it will be a ...