Politics

  Caracas /AFP Venezuela’s political rivals were expected to carry out more fraught Vatican-backed talks on Saturday as they struggle to stabilize a volatile country stricken by food shortages. The talks, which began late on Friday, could determine whether the sides maintain their fragile dialogue or the oil-rich South American country returns to antagonism and instability. “Progress was made on ...

  Hanoi / AFP Vietnam destroyed a huge stockpile of ivory and rhino horn on Saturday, urging the public to stop consuming illegal wildlife products driving several species towards extinction. The ivory and rhino horn trade is officially banned in Vietnam, but its use in traditional medicine and for decoration remains widespread, especially among the communist country’s growing elite. It ...

  BAGHDAD / AP Iraqi troops consolidated gains in their advance on the northern city of Mosul on Thursday, regrouping as they clear neighbourhoods and houses once occupied by the IS group. In Mosul proper, where troops have a foothold in a sliver of territory in the city’s east, the special forces control the Zahra neighborhood, once named after former dictator ...

  Hebron / AFP Israeli forces have sealed off the West Bank home of a Palestinian accused of helping plan an attack in Tel Aviv that left four Israelis dead, the Israeli army and residents said on Thursday. The army said the home of Younes Zein, 22, in Yatta, south of the flashpoint city of Hebron, was sealed off overnight. ...

  Moscow / AFP Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency is reporting that the armed forces chief of staff has criticized Donald Trump for his past harsh words about confronting Iranian boats in the Persian Gulf. The Thursday report quotes Gen. Mohammad Hossein Bagheri as saying, “The person who has recently achieved power, has talked off the top of his head! ...

  Moscow / AFP Russia’s defence ministry on Thursday dismissed as “counterproductive” a request from the United Nations to extend future pauses in fighting to allow aid into rebel-held eastern Aleppo as winter comes. The ministry said it received a request from the head of a UN-backed humanitarian taskforce for Syria, Jan Egeland, to make future breaks in fighting longer to ...

  Istanbul / AFP President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday hailed the founder of modern Turkey Mustafa Kemal Ataturk on the 78th anniversary of his death but added the country’s influence should go well beyond the borders of the state he created. Ataturk, who died on November 10, 1938, founded Turkey as a secular republic in 1923 out of the ...

  BEIJING /AFP A top Chinese police official was elected president of Interpol on Thursday, setting off alarm bells among rights advocates over abuses and a lack of transparency within China’s legal system, as well as the potential misuse of the police organization to attack Beijing’s political opponents. Vice Public Security Minister Meng Hongwei was named as the first Chinese ...

  Moscow/ AFP Russia’s security service said on Thursday it had detained several people in Crimea, accusing them of being saboteurs sent by Kiev to the Moscow-annexed peninsula to attack infrastructure targets. Russia’s FSB security service on Wednesday “detained members of a sabotage-terrorist group from the main intelligence directorate of the Ukrainian defence ministry,” it said in a statement. The ...

  Washington /AFP Protesters burned a giant orange-haired head of Donald Trump in effigy, lit fires in the streets and blocked traffic as rage over the billionaire’s election victory spilled onto the streets of major US cities. From New York to Los Angeles, thousands of people in around 10 cities rallied late Wednesday against the president-elect a day after his ...