Politics

  Istanbul / AFP One year after the crisis that plunged relations between Russia and Turkey to a post-Cold War low, Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan have overseen a spectacular revival in ties at a time when both are facing new tensions with the West. The shooting down of a Russian military jet over the Syrian border by the ...

  Istanbul / AFP Two people were killed and 21 wounded on Thursday when a car bomb exploded outside a local government building in the southern Turkish city of Adana, the latest attack to rock Turkey this year. The bomb exploded in the car park of the governor’s office for the Adana region, the governorate said in a statement.The explosion ...

  Istanbul / AFP The Turkish army blamed the Syrian regime for an air strike on Thursday in northern Syria that killed three soldiers and wounded 10, it said in a statement. “In the air strike assessed to have been by Syrian regime forces, three of our heroic soldiers were killed and 10 soldiers wounded, one seriously,” said the statement ...

  Seoul / AFP A vote to impeach South Korea’s scandal-hit president could take place as early as next week, lawmakers said Thursday. A growing number of ruling party politicians have endorsed the opposition-led campaign to oust President Park Geun-Hye over the scandal involving her friend Choi Soon-Sil, who leveraged their mysterious ties in milking business companies for cash and peddling ...

  Beijing / AFP All residents in China’s restive region of Xinjiang must hand in their passports to local police stations for “examination and management”, the Global Times newspaper said Thursday. “Anyone who needs the passport must apply to the police station,” an anonymous police officer in Aksu prefecture told the paper, adding that the policy had been implemented throughout Xinjiang. ...

  Lagos / AFP Amnesty International on Thursday accused Nigeria’s security forces of killing at least 150 pro-Biafra protesters and injuring hundreds since August 2015. The army denied the charge. “This deadly repression of pro-Biafra activists is further stoking tensions in the southeast of Nigeria,” Amnesty warned in its report. “This reckless and trigger-happy approach to crowd control has caused at ...

  Yaoundé / AFP Two female bombers were thwarted as they tried to stage a double suicide attack in Cameroon’s Far North Thursday, with one blowing herself up and the second shot dead by troops, security sources said. “At around 7:30 am (0630 GMT), two young suicide bombers entered the town of Mora” with the aim of blowing themselves up, ...

  Palm Beach / AFP Donald Trump began to broaden the base of his future cabinet Wednesday, nominating two conservative women including a critic, after his earlier picks rewarded campaign loyalists. Trump’s nomination of South Carolina’s 44-year-old governor, Nikki Haley, as US ambassador to the United Nations will be seen as a sign he is ready to forgive some foes ...

  Islamabad / AFP British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson called for an end to violence in Kashmir during a visit to Islamabad on Thursday, warning tensions between India and Pakistan are holding the region back from becoming an “incredible boomzone”. Johnson, who said he was visiting Pakistan for the first time, spoke a day after at least nine people were killed ...

  Brussels / AFP Germany’s Martin Schulz said on Thursday he would step down as head of the European Parliament and return to national politics, where analysts say he could emerge as a rival to Angela Merkel. The outspoken former bookseller from Aachen will quit after four years in office, during which he became one of the European Union’s most high-profile ...