Politics

  Bishoftu / AFP Several people were killed in a stampede near the Ethiopian capital on Sunday after police fired tear gas at protesters during a religious festival, according reports. Several thousand people had gathered at a sacred lake in the town of Bishoftu to take part in the Irreecha ceremony, in which the Oromo community marks the end of the ...

  BUDAPEST / AFP Hungary’s populist strongman Viktor Orban was banking on voters on Sunday to defy the European Union and reject its troubled refugee quota plan, but low turnout threatened to taint his camp’s expected referendum win. Surveys showed the referendum turnout might not reach the required 50-percent threshold and therefore be deemed invalid. But Orban has already downplayed ...

  Tripoli / AFP Libyan pro-government forces killed at least 10 IS group extremists as they attempted to flee their besieged stronghold of Sirte, the country’s unity government said on Sunday. “Our forces exterminated a group from the IS gang that were trying to escape,” said the forces in a statement. They said their fighters had recovered the bodies of ...

  AFP Hillary Clinton said she raised a record $154 million in September in her race for the White House against Donald Trump. In August, Clinton raised $143 million and Trump $90 million. It is common for campaign donations to increase as the election approaches. This year the voting is on November 8. The money is in fact divided between ...

  Sao Paulo /AFP Brazilians furious at recession and corruption voted on Sunday in municipal elections amid heightened security after a series of murders of candidates. Voting, which is mandatory in Brazil, got underway at 8:00 am (1100 GMT), with long lines immediately forming outside polling stations. Among the first to cast his ballot in the financial capital Sao Paulo ...

  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 ...