Politics

  Kabul / AFP At least 30 people were killed and hundreds wounded when a Taliban truck bomb tore through central Kabul on Tuesday, triggering a fierce firefight, a week after the insurgents launched their annual spring offensive. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in a densely crowded neighbourhood, which sent clouds of acrid smoke billowing into the sky ...

  Istanbul / AFP The death toll from rocket strikes on a Turkish town from an area in Syria controlled by extremists rose to five on Tuesday after another Syrian child died in hospital, reports said. Four Syrian children are now confirmed to have been killed in the strikes by Katyusha-type rockets Monday afternoon on the town of Kilis on ...

  Washington / AFP US President Barack Obama said he expects Iraq’s second city Mosul to be retaken from the IS group “eventually”. Obama’s comments in an interview with CBS News came on the same day that Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Washington would send Apache attack helicopters and more troops to Iraq. “As we see the Iraqis willing to ...

  Sydney / AFP Investigators were on Tuesday examining two more pieces of debris for clues to the fate of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, along with marine life found on two other items which “almost certainly” came from the lost jet. The latest two pieces—one found in South Africa and another on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius—were brought to ...

  BEIRUT / AP Fighting intensified on Tuesday in northern and central Syria as government forces sought to repel rebel advances on a government stronghold. A chief opposition negotiator meanwhile said the conditions on the ground were not conducive to political talks. Rebels and activists reported fighting in rural parts of northern Latakia province, a government stronghold, one day after ...

  London / AFP A replica of one of the most iconic monuments destroyed by IS extremists in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra was being unveiled in London’s Trafalgar Square on Tuesday. The six-metre-tall scale recreation of the Triumphal Arch is made of Egyptian marble and was carved in the northern Italian region of Tuscany using precision digital technology ...

  Bloomberg Dilma Rousseff’s presidency is hanging by a thread after Brazil’s lower house of Congress voted in favor of her impeachment, a decision that’s likely to cheer investors just as it threatens to bring down the curtain on 13 years of leftist rule. The opposition garnered 367 votes, 25 more than the two-thirds majority it needed to send the ...

  NEW YORK / AFP US presidential hopefuls launched a final campaign swing through New York on Monday on the eve of the state’s most decisive primary in decades as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump lead the polls and their rivals fight to catch up. Registered Democrats and Republicans go to the polls in the country’s fourth most populous state ...

  Moscow / AP The powerful chief of Russia’s equivalent to the FBI on Monday called for sweeping new rights restrictions, including curbing Internet freedoms and making it illegal to question Moscow’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. The head of Russia’s Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin backed a radical crackdown citing the need to counteract the “destructive” influence of the United ...

  Tripoli / AFP Libya’s parliament was set on Monday for a crucial confidence vote on a new unity government, as Britain’s Philip Hammond became the latest top diplomat to land in Tripoli in support of the UN-backed administration. Hammond flew into Tripoli on a surprise trip, hot on the heels of visits last week by the foreign ministers of ...