Politics

Cairo / AFP The Arab League on Monday rejected Kurdish-led moves for a federal system of government in Syria, charging that they would lead to the break-up of the war-torn country. League deputy secretary general Ahmed Ben Helli said the pan-Arab bloc would not recognise last week’s unilateral proclamation by the Kurds and their Arab and Assyrian Christian allies. “The ...

ATHENS / AP Monitors from Turkey have arrived on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios to help supervise an agreement aimed limiting the number of refugees flowing into the European Union via smugglers’ boats. The officers arrived on Monday and were to stay for at least one week, as Greek authorities scrambled to implement the landmark deal reached last ...

Athens / WAM A total of 1,662 migrants have landed on Greek islands near Turkey since a landmark EU-Turkish deal on curbing the influx took effect on Sunday, a Greek coordination panel said Monday. Half of the migrants—830—arrived on Chios and 698 others on Lesbos, two islands in the northeast Aegean which lie close to Turkey, according to the SOMP ...

Geneva / AFP The UN expert on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories voiced scathing criticism of Israel on Monday, as he stepped down over what he said was a lack of access to areas he was meant to monitor. Makarim Wibisono, who took on the role of Special Rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories in ...

Seoul / AFP North Korea on Monday fired five short-range missiles into the sea off its east coast—the latest in a series of launches ordered by leader Kim Jong-un amid rising military tensions. They came just days after the North test-fired two medium-range missiles in what the UN Security Council described as an “unacceptable” violation of UN resolutions. Tensions have ...

Jakarta / AFP A Chinese envoy called on Indonesia on Monday to release eight crew members of a Chinese fishing boat detained during a maritime confrontation, after he was summoned by furious Indonesian ministers. Jakarta says Indonesian vessels were on Saturday trying to detain a Chinese fishing boat operating illegally near Indonesia’s Natuna Islands in the South China Sea, when ...

Astana / AFP Citizens of energy-rich Kazakhstan went to the polls on Sunday in an early parliamentary election expected to provide a commanding majority for ageing autocrat President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan party. Close to 10 million voters are eligible to cast votes in a ballot held early amid economic gloom in the Central Asian state and featuring six ...

Karachi / AFP Pakistan’s southern Sindh province has announced a public holiday to celebrate Holi next week, the first time the Hindu “festival of colours” will be officially marked in the overwhelmingly Muslim country. The move comes days after Pakistan’s federal parliament passed a non-binding resolution that called for the country to observe Hindu and Christian holidays. “We have announced ...

Nablus / AFP Fire broke out on Sunday in the home of a key witness to an arson attack by Jewish extremists that killed a Palestinian family last year but he survived, police and residents said. The home of Ibrahim Dawabsha is located in Duma in the occupied West Bank, the same village where a July firebombing killed an 18-month-old ...

Rostov-on-Don / AFP Investigators in southern Russia on Sunday were probing the causes of a flydubai passenger jet crash that killed all 62 people on board, as emergency workers at the site wrapped up the salvage operation. The Boeing 737, which flew from Dubai to the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, exploded into a fireball early Saturday after missing the ...