Politics

  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 ...

  PRISTINA / AP Kosovo’s foreign minister has written to his counterparts in the European Union, US and other countries denouncing “numerous acts of provocation and aggression” from Serbia, an official said on Thursday. The minister, Enver Hoxhaj, called on the EU, which facilitates Pristina-Belgrade talks to normalize ties, “to urge Serbia to remain committed to good neighborly relations,” according to ...

  BEIJING / AP Sidestepping recent disputes over Taiwan and regional security, China said on Thursday that “important progress” has been made in its relationship with the US under President Barack Obama and the two countries should move forward as partners rather than competitors. Asked to sum up relations under Obama, who leaves office Friday, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying recalled ...

  BAGHDAD / AP US-backed Iraqi government troops announced on Wednesday they were in “full control” of eastern Mosul after routing IS militants from that part of the northern city, three months since the major operation started. The achievement was a “big victory,” said Iraqi Army Lt. Gen. Talib Shaghati, who commands the counter-terrorism forces, describing the success of the Iraqi ...