Politics

  ROME / AP Aid groups have revised to at least 170 the number of suspected dead from a weekend migrant shipwreck off Libya. The International Organization of Migration and UN refugee agency increased the estimate after interviewing the four survivors of the shipwreck who arrived in Trapani, Sicily, on Monday aboard the Norwegian rescue ship Siem Pilot. IOM spokesman ...

  PARIS / AP Amnesty International says European counterterrorism measures in the past two years are rapidly — and potentially permanently — eroding basic human rights throughout the continent. France, which has been hit with more recent deadly attacks than any other country in Europe, has extended its state of emergency three times, and the human rights group said in ...

  LONDON / AP British Prime Minister Theresa May has made it clear: the UK will make a clean break from the European Union and leave its single market of some 500 million people. In her most direct remarks since the June 23 vote, May said on Tuesday that Britain must regain control of its laws and borders, even as she ...

  BERLIN / AP Germany’s supreme court on Tuesday rejected a bid by lawmakers to outlaw a far-right party accused of promoting a racist and anti-Semitic agenda. Andreas Vosskuhle, chief justice of the Federal Constitutional Court, said that even though the party had unconstitutional goals, “there are currently no concrete indications … that its actions will lead to success.” The German ...

  WASHINGTON / AP More than 40 House Democrats plan to boycott President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Friday, casting the Republican businessman as a threat to democracy. Reps. Steve Cohen of Tennessee, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Don Beyer of Virginia on Monday joined a growing list of lawmakers who will not attend Trump’s swearing-in at the US Capitol. The ...

  NEW YORK / AP His inauguration days away, President-elect Donald Trump is continuing to lash out at critics in the intelligence community and Democrats in Congress who are vowing to skip his swearing-in ceremony. The tough-talking Republican questioned whether the CIA director himself was “the leaker of fake news” in a Sunday night tweet. The extraordinary criticism from the incoming ...

  JERUSALEM / AP A close associate of Israel’s prime minister says the presidency of Donald Trump could be a chance for the Palestinians to return to peace negotiations with more “realistic” expectations. Regional Cooperation Minister Tzahi Hanegbi said on Monday that Trump offers the Israelis and Palestinians an opportunity to start fresh, after years of tough pressure on Israel from ...

  BAGHDAD / AP A senior Iraqi commander says fierce clashes between special forces and IS militants are taking place in two neighborhoods in eastern Mosul. The head of Iraq’s elite counterterrorism forces, Gen. Abdel Ghani al-Asadi, told Iraqi state TV on Monday that his forces pushed deeper into the Shurta and Andalus neighborhoods. Al-Asadi described the streets as “clean” of ...

  DAVOS / AP The heads of major UN organizations on Monday called for access to civilians cut off from humanitarian aid in Syria, saying the world “must not stand silent” even though the high-profile siege of the Syrian city of Aleppo is over. The joint appeal from the UN’s refugee agency, humanitarian aid coordinator OCHA, children’s agency UNICEF, the World ...

  SEOUL / AP In a departure from the leniency typically given South Korean big businesses, prosecutors on Monday requested the arrest of the de facto head of Samsung Electronics, the country’s most valuable company, in an influence-peddling scandal that has toppled the country’s president. Lee Jae-yong, the 48-year-old vice chairman at Samsung Electronics, faces allegations of embezzlement, of lying under ...