Politics

  BANJA LUKA / AP Bosnian Serbs voted in a referendum banned by the country’s constitutional court, risking Western sanctions against their autonomous region and criminal charges against their leaders. The vote on Sunday was whether to keep Jan. 9 as a holiday in Republika Srpska, commemorating the day in 1992 that Bosnian Serbs declared the creation of their own state, ...

  Paris / AFP Two teenage girls from the French city of Nice are being held on suspicion of planning an attack directed by a notorious Syria-based French extremist, a source close to the investigation said on Sunday. The suspects, aged 17 and 19, live in the same area of Nice as Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the radicalised Tunisian man who ...

  BEIRUT / AFP Syrian government forces captured a rebel-held area on the edge of Aleppo on Saturday, tightening their siege on opposition-held neighborhoods in the northern city as an ongoing wave of airstrikes destroyed more buildings. The new government push came as the U.N. said that nearly 2 million people in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and onetime commercial center, ...

  BAGHDAD / AP A triple suicide bombing against a security check point north of Baghdad on Saturday killed at least 11 members of the security forces, a police officer said. The spokesman for the Salahuddin province police force, Col. Mohammed al-Jabouri, said three militants rammed their explosives-laden vehicles early Saturday morning into the main check point near the town ...

  Pretoria / AFP An offensive to encircle Iraq’s second city of Mosul should begin “in the next few weeks”, Britain’s Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said Friday, after a visit to the country. Mosul has been held by Islamic State jihadists since June 2014 and British jets are part of a US-led coalition flying missions against them in Iraq and ...

  United Nations / AFP The United Nations, African Union, European Union and a fourth international organization made a joint appeal on Saturday to the government and opposition in the Democratic Republic of Congo to exercise restraint amid violent political unrest. The three main international bodies were joined by the 57 International Organization of La Francophonie, which held a high-profile ...

  Libreville / AFP Libreville’s nearly empty streets were under the watch of a heavy police and military presence on Saturday after Gabon’s top court upheld President Ali Bongo’s re-election in bitterly disputed polls. Security force checkpoints dotted routes into the capital’s centre, helicopters hovered overhead and elite troops protected the presidential palace, but no violence had been reported. The ...

  Aden / AFP An apparent US drone strike has killed five suspected Al-Qaeda members in Yemen in the third such attack this week, a security official said on Saturday. Washington is the only government to operate drones over Yemen but only sporadically releases statements on its long-running bombing campaign against the country’s powerful Al-Qaeda branch. The Friday evening strike ...

  Los Angeles / AFP Police were searching on Saturday for a gunman who killed five people during a shooting at a mall in the US state of Washington, amid a raging national debate over gun control. Four women and one man were killed, police said in an updated toll. The man had been taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries, ...

  Cairo / AFP An Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced seven men to hang for killing a police general in the unrest following the 2013 military overthrow of president Mohamed Morsi. It was the defendants’ second trial, after having won an appeal against an initial sentencing. They can appeal one last time. General Nabil Farag was shot dead in September 2013 ...