Politics

  Al-Shura / AFP Iraqi forces launched an offensive on Monday to retake Mosul and deal a death blow to the IS group’s “caliphate” in the city where it was declared two years ago. Some 30,000 federal forces are leading the offensive, backed by a 60-nation US-led coalition, in what is expected to be a long and difficult assault on ...

  Yangon/ AFP Searchers have recovered 25 bodies from a ferry that sank in central Myanmar and expect to find scores more corpses as workers begin raising the boat from the riverbed, officials said Monday. A total of 154 people have been rescued since the boat sank early Saturday on the Chindwin River about 72 kilometres (45 miles) north of the ...

  Moscow / AFP An unidentified man on Monday blew himself up at the state-owned TV centre in Abkhazia, a tiny Russian-backed breakaway region of Georgia, local officials said. “A man blew himself up on the territory of the TV centre. It was obviously clear that he had a bomb,” Russian news agency RIA Novosti quoted Abkhaz interior minister Aslan ...

  Malakal / AFP At least 56 rebels and four government troops were killed in heavy weekend clashes in northeastern South Sudan, in a worrying surge of violence in the world’s youngest nation. Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) spokesman Brigadier General Lul Ruai Koang said on Monday that rebels aligned with former vice president Riek Machar attacked government troops near ...

  Hanoi / AFP Severe flooding in central Vietnam has killed at least 25 people and destroyed thousands of homes, officials said Monday, as the country braced for further destruction with a typhoon barrelling closer. Images from flood-hit provinces showed houses almost completely submerged and people paddling down waterlogged streets following heavy rain that started last week. Four people are ...

  Colombo / AFP Sri Lanka’s top anti-corruption prosecutor resigned on Monday after President Maithripala Sirisena accused her of launching politically-motivated investigations into former military officials, including the brother of his predecessor. Sirisena, who came to power last year promising to end corruption and restore rule of law, took the unusual step of publicly condemning Dilrukshi Wickramasinghe last week over ...

  Manila / AFP Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is willing to hold military exercises with China but not longtime ally the United States, Chinese media quoted him on Monday as saying on the eve of a state visit. Duterte heads to Beijing on Tuesday for a four-day trip that appears set to cement his dramatic foreign policy tilt away from United ...

  Sydney / AFP Australia’s detention of asylum-seekers on a remote Pacific island “amounts to torture” under international law, Amnesty International said on Monday in a report that alleged widespread abuse and an “epidemic of self-harm”. Canberra sends asylum-seekers who try to reach the island continent by boat to the Pacific islands of Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus, where ...

  Maungdaw / AFP Buddhist teachers have been airlifted and trucked out of northwestern Myanmar to escape a new surge of violence in the ethnically divided region, another blow to persecuted Muslim Rohingyas already marginalised by a lack of opportunity. Residents have fled their homes in the area near the Bangladesh border on military helicopters and other army vehicles over the ...

  Seoul / AFP South Korea says efforts to lift the Sewol ferry that sank more than two years ago may drag on into next year, with salvage operations hampered by poor visibility and the sheer scale of the undertaking. The 6,825-tonne vessel was carrying 476 people when it capsized and sank off the southwestern island of Jindo in April ...