Politics

  Jakarta/ AFP Thirteen people have died after an Indonesian military transport plane crashed in the east of the country on Sunday, officials said, marking yet another air accident for the armed forces. The Hercules C-130 plane took off from Timika city in Papua province carrying 12 crew and one passenger, but came down in a remote mountainous region shortly before ...

  Moscow / AFP Four armed “bandits” were killed and two wounded in a shootout following an attack on police in the capital of Russia’s Chechnya region, strongman leader Ramzan Kadyrov said. Regional boss Kadyrov said a “group of armed people” attacked a police officer and stole his car in the capital Grozny late Saturday. A shootout erupted as law ...

  Sydney / AFP Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has renewed his call for a republic, but only after Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, as he outlined a road map for breaking away from the British monarchy. Turnbull—a staunch republican who led the cause before a failed referendum in 1999—said his support for an Australian head of state stemmed from patriotism. ...

  Algiers / AFP Amnesty International on Sunday urged Algeria to adopt a law on the right to asylum and to open an investigation into the deportation of sub-Saharan migrants from the country this month. “The authorities should decriminalise irregular immigration, adopt a law on (the right to) asylum and fight racism against sub-Saharans in the country,” the group’s Algeria ...

  Caracas / AFP With protests rocking his unpopular government, embattled President Nicolas Maduro delayed until January 2 taking Venezuela’s highest denomination bill out of circulation. The 100 bolivar bills would temporarily remain legal tender, Maduro said Saturday, but the borders with Colombia and Brazil will remain closed to hit what he claims are “mafias” hoarding Venezuelan cash abroad in a ...

  Yangon / AFP Myanmar’s army has seized an important outpost from a powerful rebel faction during a bout of intense fighting, state media and insurgents confirmed on Sunday, in the latest blow to peace efforts. Fighting has blighted Myanmar’s border regions for decades, pitting various ethnic minority groups seeking autonomy or independence against the notoriously abusive military. The latest ...

Washington / AFP President Barack Obama declared that Bashar Al-Assad’s Syrian regime, Iran and Russia are responsible for the carnage in Aleppo and argued there was nothing Washington could have done to stop the war, short of a military takeover of Syria. And he warned Assad, who has been engaged in a brutal civil war against opposition forces since 2011, that ...

  Kandahar / AFP Gunmen on motorcycles shot dead five female airport workers and their driver in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, underlining the dangers facing employed women in the conservative, conflict-torn country. The women, employees of a private company that provides luggage and body search services for female passengers, were in a van driving to the airport in Kandahar when three ...

  Tehran / AFP Iran formally requested a meeting of the commission that oversees its nuclear deal with world powers to complain about the renewing of sanctions by the United States, state television reported on Saturday. The request was made in a letter by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to the European Union’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, calling for “a ...

  Istanbul / AFP Thirteen Turkish soldiers were killed and dozens more wounded on Saturday in a suicide car bombing targeting off-duty conscripts blamed on Kurdish militants, the latest in a string of attacks to rock Turkey in recent months. The government said all signs so far suggested the the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was behind the bombing in the ...