Politics

  Seoul / AFP South Korean prosecutors said on Sunday that President Park Geun-Hye colluded with her close confidante in a corruption and influence-peddling scandal that has sparked massive nationwide protests and calls for her impeachment. Park’s longtime friend Choi Soon-Sil was charged on Sunday with coercion and abuse of power, as was one of the president’s former aides. Another presidential ...

  Paris / AFP France’s right-wing presidential hopefuls kick off their nominating contest on Sunday as a sudden tightening of the race cast doubt on ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy’s chances of regaining the Elysee Palace. A late surge by the third-placed Francois Fillon, who was prime minister under Sarkozy, catapulted him into pole position for the first-round primary vote. A voter survey ...

  Berlin / AFP German Chancellor Angela Merkel told her party on Sunday she will seek re-election next year, a move likely to be welcomed in many capitals as a sign of stability following poll triumphs for Brexit and Donald Trump. After months of feverish speculation, Merkel said at a meeting of her conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) that she would run ...

  Istanbul / AFP President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says Turkey should not be “fixated” on joining the EU and has reiterated the idea of joining Russia and China in a Eurasian security group, local media reported on Sunday. His comments come as Turkey’s decades-long hopes of joining the European Union have reached a nadir, driven by the aftermath of the ...

  Aleppo / AFP Syria’s regime on Sunday pursued a relentless assault of rebel-held east Aleppo that has killed more than 100 civilians in recent days, as the UN’s peace envoy arrived in Damascus for talks. Air strikes, artillery fire and barrel bomb attacks continued through the night and into Sunday morning as the army pressed a new offensive that ...

  London / AFP Violence subsided on Sunday in Yemen, a day after the beginning of a 48-hour ceasefire declared by the pro-government Arab coalition battling rebel fighters for almost 20 months. An AFP correspondent in Sanaa said there had not been any air strikes in the rebel-held capital by warplanes of the Saudi-led coalition since the ceasefire entered into ...

  Qabr al Abd / AFP Iraqi civilians who escaped from the IS group stronghold of Mosul said extremists forced them from their villages and drove them “like sheep” to use as human shields. Bashar huddled with his family on the back of an Iraqi security forces pick-up truck after finally fleeing an area of Mosul still held by IS. ...

  Pukhrāyān / AFP Emergency workers raced on Sunday to find any more survivors in the mangled wreckage of an Indian express train that derailed overnight, killing over 100 people, in the worst disaster to hit the country’s ageing rail network in years. Many were sleeping when 14 carriages leapt from the tracks in a remote area of Uttar Pradesh ...

  Mont Pelerin / AFP Rival Cypriot leaders on Sunday resumed UN-backed talks on ending the island’s 42-year-old division, with hopes of breakthrough high but a key territory dispute unsettled. Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anastasiades and his Turkish Cypriot counterpart Mustafa Akinci were meeting at a luxury hotel in Mont Pelerin, a town on the shores of Lake Geneva, for ...

  Yangon / AFP Eight civilians were killed on Sunday when fighting broke out in a northern Myanmar town on the border with China, a region long plagued by ethnic rebel insurgencies. The latest clashes are another blow to civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s hopes of forging a nationwide peace agreement after years of war in Myanmar’s many ethnic ...