Politics

  Ankara / AFP Turkey has arrested more than 35,000 people over alleged links to the group run by the US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen, who is blamed for the failed July coup, local media reported on Sunday. Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said the suspects had been placed under arrest since the attempted putsch that fell apart within hours, quoted by ...

  Mogadishu / AFP Fighters from the Al-Qaeda-linked Shabaab group said on Sunday they had retaken control of a town in central Somalia after hundreds of Ethiopian troops serving with the African Union’s AMISOM force withdrew. It was the third time this month that the extremist group moved into a town in the region after the departure of Ethiopian forces. ...

  Aden / AFP The pro-government Arab coalition on Sunday stepped up air strikes on Iran-backed rebels in Yemen and clashes raged on the ground as warring parties ignored a UN call to renew a fragile ceasefire. The 72-hour ceasefire took effect just before midnight (2100 GMT) on Wednesday to allow aid deliveries in Yemen, whose war has killed thousands ...

  Aden / AFP Yemen’s government announced on Sunday that nine people had died of cholera in second city Aden as the infectious disease spread across the war-torn country. Ten other people in the southern port city have been diagnosed with the potentially fatal disease which is transmitted through contaminated drinking water and causes acute diarrhoea, the health ministry said. ...

  Arbil / AFP US Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter arrived in Iraq’s autonomous region of Kurdistan on Sunday to review the ongoing military offensive to retake the extremist bastion of Mosul. As the Pentagon chief went into talks with Kurdish leader Massud Barzani, US officials said Kurdish peshmerga forces had almost reached their goals in the week-old offensive. The battle ...

  Lagos / AFP Nigerian troops have thwarted an attempted hijack of a vessel in the restive Niger Delta and separately arrested five pipeline vandals, a spokesman said on Sunday. “Troops of Operation Base 2 repelled a hijack of a vessel (MT VAJARA) by heavily armed bandits in Ramos River, around Agge area of Delta state,” Lieutenant Commander Thomas Otuji said ...

  Calais / AFP With only hours to go before workers begin to demolish France’s “Jungle” migrant camp on Monday, officials are racing to process as many young people as possible to be transferred to Britain. The pace is therefore brisk at the camp outside Calais: young migrants are shown into a container where British Home Office officials have set up ...

  Port-au-Prince / AFP At least 172 inmates escaped a Haitian prison near the capital Port-au-Prince during an armed mutiny, killing one guard and many escaping with police weapons, local media reported. Le Nouvelliste newspaper quoted Arcahaie prison manager Heurtelou Paul Colson on Saturday as saying a guard was shot dead and two other police officers were wounded. One prisoner ...

  Tokyo / AFP One person was killed and at least two injured by twin near-simultaneous blasts in a Japanese park on Sunday, the local fire department said. The explosions occurred at a park in Utsunomiya, some 100 kilometres north of Tokyo, shortly after 11:30 am, a fire department spokesman said. It was not immediately clear what caused the blasts. ...

  Philadelphia / AFP With polls giving her the edge on Election Day, Democratic White House nominee Hillary Clinton said that she planned to work hard to see her party make gains in Congress. Speaking to reporters aboard her campaign plane, the 68-year-old former secretary of state said she no longer wished to respond to the attacks or provocations of her ...