Politics

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 ...

Brussels / AFP Brussels airport will not reopen before Tuesday as it implements new security measures and repairs the departure hall wrecked by a suicide bomb attack earlier this week, it said on Saturday. “Passenger flights at Brussels Airport will not resume before Tuesday 29 March,” Zaventem airport said in a statement. “Brussels Airport is starting preparations to partially resume ...

Washington / AFP US states Alaska, Hawaii and Washington take their turn voting on Saturday in the Democratic presidential nominating contest, with Hillary Clinton unlikely to deliver a knockout blow against resilient rival Bernie Sanders. The trio of western caucuses marks a chance for Vermont Senator Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, to chisel away at Clinton’s formidable lead in the ...

Washington / AFP President Barack Obama on Saturday urged Americans not to stigmatize Muslims following this week’s deadly attacks in Brussels, saying that doing so is “counterproductive” in the fight against radical Islam. In his weekly media address, Obama said Muslim-Americans are “our most important partners in the nation’s fight against those who would wage violent holy war.” “That’s why ...

Bloomberg The US and Russia set an August deadline for a deal to end Syria’s five-year war as they agreed to try to push forward negotiations between the government and opposition that remain deadlocked over the fate of Russian ally President Bashar Al Assad. “We will accelerate the effort to try and move the political process forward,” US Secretary of ...

Baghdad / AFP United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Baghdad on Saturday for talks with senior officials on ways of assisting war-ravaged Iraq, the world body said. Ban, who had last visited the Iraqi capital in March 2015, was travelling with World Bank chief Jim Yong Kim and Islamic Development Bank head Ahmad Al Madani. They went straight ...