Politics

  BEIJING / AP At least two people were killed and 10 others are missing after a hotel in central China was buried in a landslide, the local government reported on Saturday. Crews were working to dig out those trapped in the Mirage Hotel that was struck by the disaster around 7:30 p.m. on Friday, the government of Nanzhang county in ...

  BANJUL / AP As Gambia’s defeated authoritarian ruler prepares to leave the country, human rights activists demand that he be held accountable for alleged abuses. Yahya Jammeh announced early Saturday he will cede power, after hours of last-ditch talks with regional leaders and the threat that a regional military force would forcibly remove him. No date has been set for ...

  BEIJING / AP People in Beijing expressed doubts on Saturday about President Donald Trump’s ability to steer the US economy and manage China-American relations, underscoring concerns over trade, Taiwan and other issues. While Trump didn’t mention China in his inaugural address on Friday, he referred often to the country during the campaign and upended diplomatic protocol after the election by ...

  KOBLENZ / AP French presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen declared on Saturday that 2017 will be the “year of the awakening of the people of continental Europe” as she joined fellow nationalist leaders in Germany at the beginning of a year of high-stakes national elections. Le Pen was joined by the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders, Matteo Salvini of Italy’s Northern League ...

  ISTANBUL / AP Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has started campaigning for constitutional reforms that would greatly expand the powers of his office, hours after a vote in parliament cleared the way for a national referendum on the issue. Speaking in Istanbul on Saturday, he hailed the assembly’s early-morning decision and said “God willing the people will give the true ...

  TEHRAN / AP A high-rise building in Tehran engulfed by fire collapsed on Thursday, killing at least 30 firefighters and injuring some 75 people, state media reported. The disaster struck the Plasco building, an iconic structure in central Tehran just north of the Iranian capital’s sprawling bazaar. Firefighters, soldiers and other emergency responders dug through the rubble, looking for survivors. ...

  MILAN / AP Rescue workers were met with an eerie silence on Thursday when they reached a four-star spa hotel struck by an avalanche in a mountainous earthquake-stricken region of central Italy. At least 30 people were missing, including at least two children, authorities said. Guests at the three-story Hotel Rigopiano in the central Abruzzo region alerted emergency workers of ...

  LUCKNOW / AP A truck loaded with sand collided with a school bus early Thursday, killing at least 24 young children in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, police said. At least two dozen other children were injured when the speeding truck collided head-on with the bus, said Javeed Ahmed, the state’s top police official. The children, between the ...

  Bloomberg A day before US President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, another pro-Russian president was sworn in far to the east, in NATO member Bulgaria, as questions arise over the future of the alliance amid rising animosity with its Cold-War adversary. Rumen Radev, a 53-year-old, US-trained general, took an oath of office on Thursday in Sofia after defeating the ruling party’s ...

  NICOSIA / AP Greece’s president says an insistence by Turkey and Turkish Cypriots on keeping troops and military intervention rights on Cyprus even after the ethnically split island is reunified is “anachronistic” and unacceptable.” President Procopis Pavlopoulos says such positions are contrary to European Union norms and would create “dangerous precedents” if implemented. He said after talks with Cypriot President ...