Politics

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 ...

Washington / AFP CIA Director John Brennan promised that the US spy agency won’t use so-called “enhanced interrogation” techniques, including waterboarding, against terror suspects—not even under a new president’s orders to do so. Brennan’s comments may have an impact on this year’s White House race, after Republican frontrunner Donald Trump said he would authorize waterboarding—which President Barack Obama banned shortly ...

Hiroshima / AFP The United States is prepared to “ratchet up” pressure on North Korea after its latest provocations but remains open to talks, US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday. “It is still possible we will ratchet up (the pressure) even more depending on the actions of the DPRK (North Korea),” Kerry told reporters after a G7 ...

Moscow / AFP Three suicide bombers blew themselves up outside a police station in southern Russia on Monday as they tried to storm the building, police said, but no other casualities were reported. “We were holding a meeting in the morning when five explosions went off,” Sergei Karamyshev, a senior police officer in the village of Novoselitskoye in the southern ...

Greece / AFP Greece on Monday lashed out at Macedonia for using “excessive force” after police fired tear gas and rubber bullets on migrants trying to breach the closed border to enter the EU. Macedonian police accused crowds of hurling stones and other objects at them on Sunday in a bid to break down a fence at the border with ...

Brazil / AfP An impeachment commission was due to vote on the fate of Brazilian President DilmaRousseff ahead of a vote by the lower house of Congress to decide whether she should go to trial. Bad-tempered debate, interrupted by heckling and chanting, kicked off in the commission in Brasilia while security forces mounted a huge operation outside to separate rival ...