Politics

  Seoul / AFP Strong waves forced the suspension of an operation to lift a South Korean ferry that sank in 2014 in a disaster that shocked and enraged the country, a spokesman said on Tuesday. The Sewol was carrying 476 people when it sank off the southwestern island of Jindo in April 2014, with the loss of 304 lives—most …

  Brussels / AFP The EU’s top court on Tuesday backed Britain’s right to limit child benefits to European migrants, a hot-button issue in Britain’s referendum on its future in the European Union next week. The decision comes as a series of opinion polls show a growing lead for the campaign for a “Brexit,” despite Prime Minister David Cameron’s appeals …

  BAMAKO / AP A Chinese peacekeeper killed while serving with the UN mission in Mali has been given a hero’s funeral in his home province. The ashes of 29-year-old first sergeant Shen Liangliang were interred on Tuesday in a cemetery for national heroes in his native Henan. State media reports said thousands of people lined the streets along the …

  Geneva / AFP   The UN’s human rights chief voiced alarm on Monday at the increasing detention of migrants in Europe, including unaccompanied children, amid widespread anti-migrant rhetoric across the continent. As Europe faces its biggest migration crisis since the aftermath of World War II, UN rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said he had sent staff members to assess …

  Nairobi / AFP Eritrea on Monday accused arch-rival Ethiopia of attacking its heavily militarised border, but officials in Addis Ababa said they had no knowledge of the reported fighting. Ethiopia on Sunday “unleashed an attack against Eritrea on the Tsorona Central Front,” Eritrea’s ministry of information said in a statement. Ethiopian government spokesman Getachew Redda said there were “no …

  Tehran / AFP Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards have killed five Kurdish rebels near the country’s northwestern border with Iraq, an official statement said on Monday. “A team of five from the PJAK terrorist splinter group… has been identified and destroyed in the Sardasht region” on the Iraqi border, a Guards statement said on its official website. It said the …

  Pretoria / AFP Oscar Pistorius is suffering from depression, a South African court heard on Monday, as the Paralympic athlete faced a return to jail for murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp three years ago. The double-amputee killed Steenkamp, a model and law graduate, in the early hours of Valentine’s Day in 2013, saying he mistook her for an intruder …

  Jerusalem / AFP Israel has reopened Palestinian crossing points from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip following a three-day closure put in place after last week’s deadly Tel Aviv shooting, the army said on Monday. Crossings were reopened overnight as planned, an army spokeswoman said, though “security checks are ongoing” in Yatta, the West Bank village where the …

  Manila / AFP Filipino protesters said on Monday that Chinese coastguard ships blocked and sprayed them with water as they sailed to a disputed South China Sea shoal to plant a Philippine flag for independence day. China claims most of the strategic and resources-rich sea and has controlled Scarborough Shoal, just 230 kilometres (145 miles) off the main Philippine …

  Bloomberg The FBI let the Orlando mass-shooting suspect slip through its grasp despite interviewing him twice since 2013 due to a lack of evidence to hold him, a troubling fact that will pressure officials struggling to detect lone terrorists without eroding basic civil liberties. The FBI is investigating Sunday’s killing spree at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, as an …