Politics

Brussels / AFP Belgians gathered on Sunday in solidarity and defiance in central Brussels to remember victims of the country’s worst-ever terror attacks as prosecutors charged a second man over a foiled attack in France. As mourners gathered at a square which has been transformed into a shrine to the victims of Tuesday’s attacks on the airport and the metro ...

Kuala Lumpur / AFP Leaders from across Malaysia’s political spectrum said on Sunday they plan to present a petition to the country’s Islamic royalty seeking the removal of scandal-plagued Prime Minister Najib Razak over a corruption crisis. The highly unusual grouping of heavyweights from the ruling party, the opposition and civil society groups was formed in early March, when it ...

Damascus / AP Syrian government forces backed by Russian airstrikes drove IS fighters from Palmyra on Sunday, ending the group’s reign of terror over a town whose famed 2,000-year-old ruins once drew tens of thousands of visitors each year. Government forces had been on the offensive for nearly three weeks to try to retake the central town, known among Syrians ...

Jerusalem / AP Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended the military on Sunday following uproar over footage of a soldier lethally shooting a Palestinian attacker who had already been shot and subdued. Netanyahu said the incident in question does not reflect the military’s conduct, and that criticism of the armed forces as a whole over the incident is “outrageous and ...

Dhaka / AFP Four Bangladeshis have been killed in gunfights between rival groups in the war-torn Libyan city of Benghazi, a minister said on Sunday. State minister for foreign affairs Shahriar Alam said he did not yet have full details on the dead. Alam said embassy officials had received three bodies and they were being stored in a hospital in ...

Makhmur / AFP Thousands of desperate civilians were fleeing fighting on Sunday on the new front opened by Iraqi forces against the IS group south of the city of Mosul. Families crammed in the back of pickup trucks, sometimes bringing dead and wounded with them, emerged from the dust after crossing the front line and were met by Kurdish forces. ...

Naypyidaw / AFP Myanmar’s powerful army chief vowed on Sunday to keep the nation “on the path to democracy”, days before Aung San Suu Kyi’s civilian government takes office after decades of army rule. Senior General Min Aung Hlaing made the remarks at an annual display of military might by Myanmar’s armed forces, a body that long crushed democratic aspirations ...

Idomeni / AFP Hundreds of hopeful refugees flooded back to Greece’s overwhelmed Idomeni camp on the border with Macedonia on Sunday following rumours that the closed frontier would be forced open. The renewed influx came as Greek authorities were trying to evacuate an estimated 11,500 people who were stranded at the squalid camp after Balkan states slammed shut their borders, ...

Brussels / AFP Police pressed ahead on Saturday with the search for suspects in Belgium’s worst ever terror attack, as a series of raids and arrests revealed more links with the November Paris killings and a new French plot. The government meanwhile came in for a torrent of criticism, with key ministers on the back foot saying they had done ...

Washington / AFP The brothers who carried out the airport and metro suicide bombings in Belgium’s capital this week were known to US authorities and listed in American terrorism databases, television network NBC reported on Thursday. The report cited two unnamed US officials as saying that Ibrahim and Khalid El Bakraoui were listed as a “potential terror threat” in US ...