Politics

Sudan / AFP Sudan’s conflict-hit Darfur region starts voting on Monday on whether to unify its five states, a long-standing demand of rebels seeking greater autonomy, but ongoing instability means insurgents are boycotting the referendum. The three-day vote is expected to maintain the five-state system, which President Omar Al Bashir’s ruling party says is more efficient but which observers say ...

Seoul / AFP North Korea said on Saturday it had successfully tested an engine designed for an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) that would “guarantee” an eventual nuclear strike on the US mainland. It was the latest in a series of claims by Pyongyang of significant breakthroughs in both its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes. Outside experts have treated a ...

PENGJIA ISLET / AP President Ma Ying-jeou on Saturday visited a small island in the East China Sea to reassert Taiwan’s sovereignty and its role in the contested region, one of the key issues of his administration that ends next month. Ma’s visit on Saturday to Pengjia, roughly 35 miles (56 kilometers) north of Taiwan proper, was his administration’s second ...

Mogadishu / AFP Two members of Somalia’s Al-Qaeda-linked Shabab extremist group were executed by firing squad on Saturday for the murder of a journalist killed by a car bomb last year, a judge said. Abdirisak Mohamed Barow et Hassan Nur Ali, who admitted being Shebab members during their trial, were shot on Saturday morning in Mogadishu, Abdulahi Hussein Mohamed, deputy ...

CAIRO / AP The Saudi-led coalition behind a year-long military campaign against Yemen’s Shiite rebels is ready to commit to a cease-fire as long as the rebels abide by a UN Security Council resolution that calls for their pullout from Yemeni cities, the alliance’s spokesman said. Brig. Gen. Ahmed Al Asiri told The Associated Press that the Yemeni rebels known ...

Tehran / AFP Iran’s defence minister poured scorn on Saturday on US Secretary of State John Kerry’s accusations that Tehran is “destabilising” the Middle East, countering that America should get out of the region. The broadside illustrated new tension between Iran and the United States, despite last year’s nuclear deal, with contrasting stances on the conflicts in Yemen and Syria ...

Al-Qaryatain / AFP Bassam Dabbas did not think he would survive to see his hometown of Al-Qaryatain retaken when IS group extremists seized control and captured him and hundreds of other Christians. Now, around eight months later, he stands in the charred remains of the Mar Elian church where he once used to pray, and struggles to digest that he ...

Malaysia / AFP A Malaysian parliamentary report released on Thursday said a state-owned fund linked to Prime Minister NajibRazak made more than $3 billion in unexplained overseas payments and called for the fund’s former CEO to be investigated. The report presented to parliament by its Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which has examined the affair, marked the first time an official ...

Johannesburg / Bloomberg With South African President Jacob Zuma facing growing calls to resign over a series of corruption scandals, attention is turning to one potential contender to succeed him—his former wife. NkosazanaDlamini-Zuma, 67, is a long-standing heavyweight in the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party, holding several ministerial positions since the end of white-minority rule in 1994. Confirmation last ...

Ankara / AFP Turkish President RecepTayyipErdogan on Thursday warned the European Union that Ankara would not implement a key deal on reducing the flow of migrants if Brussels failed to fulfil its side of the bargain. “There are precise conditions. If the European Union does not take the necessary steps, then Turkey will not implement the agreement,” Erdogan said in ...