Politics

New Delhi / AFP US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and his Indian counterpart agreed on Tuesday to strengthen their cooperation on maritime security, as concerns grow in Washington over Beijing’s growing military ambitions. Carter is in New Delhi to bolster a strategic relationship Washington considers crucial in the face of what it sees as China’s rising assertiveness, particularly in the ...

BEIRUT / AP Pro-government forces in Syria launched an offensive on Tuesday to retake a strategic hilltop village south of Aleppo from insurgents, including Al-Qaida’s local affiliate. Al-Manar TV, run by Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, which is fighting alongside Syrian government forces, reported the offensive to retake Tel Al Ais. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist-run monitoring group, ...

Libreville / AFP The number of children used by Nigeria’s Boko Haram to stage suicide bombings has risen more than 10-fold in one of the most “horrific” aspects of the insurgency, the United Nations said on Tuesday. Experts said the group, which has been weakened by a multinational military offensive, is now trying to spread terror by using children for ...

Brussels / AFP Belgium has charged two new suspects over last month’s deadly Brussels airport and metro attacks, as police pursue the investigation “night and day”, the federal prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday. A statement said Smail F and Ibrahim F were “charged with participation in the activities of a terrorist group, terrorist murders and attempts to commit terrorist murders, ...

Brussels / AFP The European Union on Tuesday renewed sanctions against Iran over its human rights record, even as it relaxes damaging measures imposed on Tehran to force it to rein in its disputed nuclear programme. “The Council (of member states) decided to extend until April 13, 2017 its restrictive measures against 82 people and one entity in view of ...

Vienna / AFP Austria sparked consternation in Rome on Tuesday with preliminary construction work at the Brenner pass in the Alps to prepare for a possible new influx of migrants coming north from Italy. A police spokesman in Tyrol state said that work started on Tuesday on concrete foundations for a planned control area in a layby off the northbound ...

TAIPEI / AP Armed Kenyan guards used tear gas to dislodge a group of Taiwanese citizens from a detention center and force them to board a flight to China, a top Taiwanese diplomat said on Tuesday, amid a complicated diplomatic tussle that threatens to cause further rifts between Taipei and Beijing. Director General of the Foreign Ministry’s Department of West ...

Brasília / AFP Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s fate rested on Tuesday on the loyalties of the last 100 or so congressional deputies yet to declare how they will vote in a looming impeachment showdown. In a ruthless and complex contest, supporters and opponents of Brazil’s first female president raced to amass the magic number that will make history when the ...

Kiev / AFP Ukraine’s parliament was weighing on Tuesday whether to approve the resignation of embattled Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk as furious backroom talks raged about the makeup of a new pro-EU government. The volatile political situation in the former Soviet republic took a new twist when the man tipped to replace Yatsenyuk—condemned by President Petro Poroshenko for losing the ...

HIROSHIMA / AP A gut-wrenched John Kerry said Hiroshima’s horrible history should teach humanity to avoid conflict and strive to eradicate nuclear weapons as he became the first US secretary of state to tread upon the ground of the world’s first atomic bombing. Kerry’s emotional visit on Monday to the Japanese city included him touring its peace museum with other ...