Politics

  Colombo / AFP A gunman shot dead three women, including a council leader, as they were leaving a restaurant in a small Finnish town on Saturday night, police said. Investigators cited by the SST news agency on Sunday said the municipal council head and two local journalists were killed in the town of Imatra by a man armed with ...

  Oakland / AFP Fire crews in California worked into the night Saturday sifting through the remains of a warehouse gutted by a blaze during a rave party, with officials saying they fear the death toll could reach 40. Relatives of dozens of people missing in the Friday night blaze in Oakland near San Francisco continued their anxious wait for news. ...

  Kuala Lumpur / AFP Aung San Suu Kyi must step in to prevent the “genocide” of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, Malaysia’s prime minister said on Sunday as he mocked the Nobel laureate for her inaction. Addressing a 5,000-strong rally in Kuala Lumpur, Najib Razak said the Myanmar government must stop the bloody crackdown in its far west that has ...

  Santiago De Cuba / AFP Fidel Castro’s ashes were buried alongside national heroes in the cradle of his revolution on Sunday, as Cuba opens a new era without the communist leader who ruled the island for decades. Capping a week of tributes and mass rallies, Castro was laid to rest near the mausoleum of 19th century independence icon Jose Marti ...

  Aleppo / AFP Fierce fighting shook east Aleppo on Sunday as Syrian government forces pressed an assault that has seen them retake control of more than half of the former rebel stronghold. President Bashar al-Assad’s army is nearly three weeks into an operation to recapture all of Syria’s second city, divided between regime and rebel forces since 2012. Tens of ...

  Beirut / AFP Air strikes on a village in the Syrian province of Idlib killed at least 21 civilians on Sunday, among them three children, a monitor said. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which earlier reported an initial toll of 14, said dozens more had been injured in the strikes on the village of Kafr Nabal. It ...

  London / AP The Syrian regime’s advances in war-torn east Aleppo do not represent a “victory for Assad” or his Russian ally Vladimir Putin, British foreign minister Boris Johnson said on Sunday. “I really think that it’s a mistake to think whatever happens in Aleppo and other areas of rebel-held Syria could amount to a victory for Assad or for ...

  Aleppo / AFP For much of the past four years, taking a bus between the two sides of Syria’s divided second city Aleppo meant an arduous, and sometimes dangerous, 10-hour road trip. But on Saturday, the trip took just half an hour, as buses travelled directly from the government-held west to recently recaptured neighbourhoods in the east. At least 10 ...

  New Delhi / AFP Afghan President Ashraf Ghani accused Pakistan on Sunday of waging an “undeclared war” and said Taliban insurgents battling his government would not last a month without sanctuary in the neighbouring state. Ghani also urged Pakistan to spend around $500 million pledged in aid for Afghanistan to tackle extremism instead. “Despite our intense engagement with Pakistan ...

  Ramallah / AFP Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah party is to announce results of a vote for its ruling bodies Sunday, an election watched closely for clues of how the 81-year-old sees his succession. The election for both the party’s central committee and its parliament, known as the revolutionary council, is also expected to sideline Abbas opponents — a key ...