Politics

Brussels / AFP The US and Cuban presidents expressed hope for the improving relationship between their nations even as they underscored deep differences over human rights and governance, in an extraordinary news conference punctuated by Raul Castro’s critique of the American social safety net and an awkward miscue on a closing handshake. “After more than five very difficult decades, the ...

Kunduz / AP The new commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan apologized on Tuesday to the people of Kunduz for the deadly attack on a hospital in the city last year that killed 42 people. US Army Gen. John Nicholson traveled to the northern city to meet local leaders and relatives of those who died in the Oct. ...

Hanoi / AP A prominent Vietnamese blogger who is a former police officer and the son of a late government minister will be put on trial this week for alleged anti-state postings, his lawyer said on Tuesday. Nguyen Huu Vinh and his assistant, Nguyen Thi Minh Thuy, are accused of abusing democratic freedoms to infringe on the interests of the ...

Tokyo / AFP A nuclear transport vessel carrying a huge cache of plutonium—enough to produce 50 nuclear bombs—to be returned to the US left a Japanese port on Tuesday afternoon. The stockpile, provided by the United States, Britain and France decades ago for research purposes, is being shipped to the US as part of a bilateral storage deal. Television footage ...

Washington / AFP Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump exchanged jabs as they separately courted a massive crowd of pro-Israel lobbyists, putting their differing views on supporting the Jewish state front and center in their White House battle. Democrat Clinton positioned herself as an unwavering friend to Israel, while bashing her rival as prejudiced and insufficiently supportive of one of America’s ...

Astana / AFP President Barack Obama arrived in Havana for a visit that he hopes will help end a hostile US policy toward Cuba that he views as futile, lifting one of the biggest impediments to closer US alliances across Latin America. Air Force One touched down at Jose Marti International Airport at about 4:19 pm. Obama took an evening ...

Donetsk / AFP A court in southern Russia on Monday found Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko guilty of murder over the killing of two Russian journalists in war-torn east Ukraine, at a trial condemned by Kiev and the West as a political sham. Savchenko “committed the premeditated murder as part of a group of people from the motives of hatred and ...

Astana / AFP Energy-rich Kazakhstan’s ruling party has secured a landslide win in parliamentary polls that never threatened to trouble autocrat President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s long reign, official results confirmed Monday. According to the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) Nazarbayev’s Nur Otan party won 82 percent of votes in Sunday’s election and will share parliament with the pro-government People’s Communist Party and ...

Brasília / AFP Brazil’s struggling leftist government is fighting on two fronts as impeachment proceedings threaten President Dilma Rousseff and legal battles harry her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Rousseff’s presidency appears to be in peril as she fights impeachment, protests, recession and scandal, and her decision to call Lula to the rescue backfired last week when a judge ...

Tortosa / AFP Spanish investigators on Monday sought to establish the cause of a weekend coach crash that killed 13 female students from six countries, most of them Italians, as they were returning from a festival. The vehicle was carrying students from about 20 countries, many of them on the European Erasmus exchange programme in Barcelona, the seaside capital of ...