Politics

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 ...

STOCKHOLM / AP A 20-year-old Swedish national has been charged with preparing to a make a suicide bomb, a prosecutor said on Thursday. Prosecutor EwamariHaggkvist says the suspect, who denies the charges, “could have seriously hurt Sweden.” “He told relatives he had sympathies for (the Islamic State group) and would blow himself up for them in Sweden,” Haggkvist told The ...

BAGHDAD / AP Iraq’s elite counterterrorism forces say they have entered the center of a strategically important western Islamic State-held town. Government forces reached the center of Hit on Wednesday. The operation to retake the small Euphrates river town — initially launched last month — was stalled by politics, heavy IS resistance and tens of thousands of trapped civilians. Iraqi ...

Brussels / AFP Gone are the usual snap-happy crowds on Brussels’ famed Grand Place, visits to the Atomium monument have plummeted and hotel rooms are empty. Two weeks after the Belgian capital was hit by terror attacks, the country’s tourist industry is in despair. As Belgium struggles to move on from the March 22 IS suicide bombings that struck Brussels ...

Hanoi / AFP Vietnam’s parliament approved Nguyen XuanPhuc as the communist country’s new prime minister on Thursday, handing him a five-year term and a range of tough challenges from domestic economic reforms to a simmering maritime dispute with China. Phuc, a former deputy prime minister, was the only candidate nominated for the position by party officials earlier this year and ...

Bethpage / AFP Donald Trump attacked his insurgent Republican rival Ted Cruz and ignored his crushing defeat in Wisconsin, electrifying thousands of passionate supporters at a home state rally in New York. “It’s great to be home,” the 67-year-old Manhattan tycoon told a fist-pumping, cheering crowd at Grumman Studios in the Long Island town of Bethpage, where Apollo Lunar Module ...