Politics

  London / AFP Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto on Thursday said that for more than three years it has faced an investigation by top US financial regulator SEC over a writedown of Mozambique assets. “In response to press reports regarding a US Securities Exchange Commission investigation, Rio Tinto confirms that it is cooperating with inquiries from the relevant authorities relating ...

  Kiev / AFP Ukraine on Thursday unleashed a barrage of missile tests near Russian-annexed Crimea in a show of strength and defiance bound to irritate Moscow. The two-day military drills near the Black Sea peninsula are a first for the former Soviet republic and a sign that it is regaining assertiveness in the face of its arch-foe Russia. “No one ...

  Sydney / AFP High-risk terror offenders in Australia may now be kept in jail even after serving their sentences, under legislation passed on Thursday that strengthens laws to tackle the threat posed by extremists. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull flagged the move in July, prompted by the frequency and severity of attacks around the world. It will allow Attorney-General George Brandis ...

  Medellín / AFP The pilot of a charter plane carrying a Brazilian football team radioed frantically that he was out of fuel minutes before slamming into a hillside near Medellin with 77 people on board, an audio recording showed. Details of the doomed aircraft’s last harrowing minutes emerged on Wednesday as fans mourned the loss of all but six people ...

  Aleppo / AFP Hundreds of elite Syrian troops moved into east Aleppo on Thursday ahead of a push into the most densely populated areas, after the UN warned the city risked becoming a “giant graveyard”. Despite fierce global criticism, forces loyal to President Bashar Al-Assad have pressed an assault to retake control of all of Aleppo, once Syria’s commercial ...

  Moscow / AFP President Vladimir Putin adopted a conciliatory tone to international rivals in a key speech on Thursday, saying Russia needed has “never looked for enemies” in the international community. “We do not want confrontation with anyone. It is not needed—not by us, our partners, the international community,” Putin said during an address on the state of the nation. ...

  Istanbul / AFP Moscow and Damascus were not behind an air strike in northern Syria that killed four Turkish soldiers, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday. “Neither Russia nor Syria, its air force, had anything to do with this,” Lavrov told a news conference in the southern Turkish resort of Alanya, alongside his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu. ...

  Genevat / AFP Russia has proposed setting up four humanitarian corridors to battered eastern Aleppo to allow in aid as well as hundreds of desperately needed medical evacuations, the United Nation said on Thursday. “The Russian Federation announced that… they want to sit down in Aleppo with our people there to discuss how we can use the four corridors to ...

  Jerusalem / AFP A leading minister called Mahmud Abbas Israel’s top ideological enemy on Thursday after the Palestinian president suggested he could withdraw recognition if progress was not made towards peace. Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz, seen as close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, called the Palestinian leader’s remarks at a Fatah party congress in Ramallah on Wednesday “a sad joke.” ...

  Beijing / AFP Beijing will “seriously” implement new United Nations sanctions imposed on North Korea over its nuclear and missile programmes, it said on Thursday, with the measures set to hit Pyongyang’s lucrative Chinese coal exports hard. UN Security Council resolution 2321, passed on Wednesday, caps the North’s annual coal exports at little more than four months of current ...