Politics

  Baku / AFP Pope Francis on Sunday called for a “stable peace” as he visited mainly Muslim Azerbaijan, several months after pushing for an end to a festering territorial feud while in arch-foe Armenia. The pontiff met in private with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev — who is accused by rights groups of ruthlessly stamping out dissent in the energy-rich ...

  Bogota / AFP Colombians voted in a referendum on Sunday on whether to ratify a historic peace accord to end a 52-year war between the state and the communist FARC rebels. The accord will effectively end what is seen as the last major armed conflict in the Western Hemisphere. The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people and ...

  New Delhi / AFP Indian commandos carried out a series of lightning strikes on Thursday along the de facto border with Pakistan in Kashmir, provoking furious charges of ‘naked aggression’ from its nuclear-armed neighbour. Amid anger in India over a recent deadly assault on one of its army bases in Kashmir, officials said troops had conducted “surgical strikes” several ...

  Bloomberg Dutch investigators said Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was brought down in 2014 by a Buk missile system that was fired from rebel-held territory in Ukraine and shuttled back and forth from Russia, stoking renewed tensions over the crash that killed 298 people. About 100 people were involved in shooting down the flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, the ...

  Kabul / AFP Notorious Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar called for peace as he appeared by video to sign a deal with President Ashraf Ghani on Thursday, marking a symbolic victory in Kabul’s struggle to revive talks with the Taliban. The deal paves the way for Hekmatyar, who heads the now largely dormant Hezb-i-Islami militant group but has been in ...

  United Nations / AFP Rights group Amnesty International on Thursday accused Sudanese government forces of killing scores of civilians, including many children, in suspected chemical weapons attacks in a mountainous area of war-torn Darfur. More than 30 such attacks are believed to have been carried out on several villages as part of a massive military campaign against rebels in Darfur’s ...

  Geneva / AFP The United Nations described on Thursday a desperate situation in Syria’s rebel-held eastern Aleppo, warning “hundreds” needed medical evacuation and that there was only enough food aid left for a quarter of the city’s population. “Utmost on our mind is the need to address the very concerning medical situation” in the east of Aleppo, UN deputy envoy ...

  Ankara / AFP Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested on Thursday it may be necessary to keep the state of emergency imposed after the July coup bid in place for at least a year. His comments came a day after he chaired Turkey’s top national security body which called for the current state of emergency to be extended when it ...

  Oslo / AFP Norway’s Rafto Prize for human rights was on Thursday awarded to Yanar Mohammed of Iraq for her efforts to help minorities and women subjected to sexual abuse in the war-torn country, the jury said. Mohammed, 55, a journalist and feminist fighting for democratic principles and human rights, is the co-founder and head of the Organisation of ...

Riyadh / AP Saudi Arabia could reduce valuable security and intelligence cooperation with longstanding ally Washington after a Congressional “stab in the back” allowing 9/11 victims to sue the kingdom, experts warn. Cutting such cooperation is among the options available to Riyadh after Congress voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to override President Barack Obama’s veto of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism ...