Politics

  Lusaka / AFP Zambian President Edgar Lungu called for national unity in his inauguration speech on Tuesday, as a defeated opposition candidate dismissed the ceremony as “illegal and unconstitutional”. Lungu, who first took power last year, won the August 11 election by around 100,000 votes but his opponent Hakainde Hichilema has alleged that the result was riddled with fraud. ...

  Tripoli / AFP Libya’s UN-backed unity government lost control on Monday of a third oil port seized by rival forces, raising fears of a major outbreak of fresh violence in the chaos-ridden country. The loss comes after fighters backing a rival administration in east Libya seized two other terminals from guards loyal to the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) ...

  Vientiane / AFP US President Barack Obama warned Beijing on Thursday it could not ignore a tribunal’s ruling rejecting its sweeping claims to the South China Sea, driving tensions higher in a territorial row that threatens regional security. The dispute has raised fears of military confrontation between the world’s superpowers, with China determined to cement control of the strategically vital ...

  Vientiane / AFP With months left in office, US President Barack Obama said on Thursday he was not ready to give up on an eight-year-old promise to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Obama urgently wants to shutter the facility before he leaves the White House at the start of next year but his efforts have been continually thwarted by ...

  Paris / AFP Salah Abdeslam, thought to be the sole surviving member of the extremist team that attacked Paris in November 2015, on Thursday refused to answer questions from French anti-terror judges for a third time. “He exercised his right to silence,” Frank Berton told reporters after his 26-year-old client appeared at Paris’s main courthouse. The lawyer said he was ...

  Berlin / AFP Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Bavarian allies have called for tougher immigration rules in Germany that favour migrants from Europe’s “Christian-occidental cultural sphere”, according to a party paper seen by AFP on Thursday. The CSU party also has demanded a ban on the Muslim full-face and partial-face veils, an end to dual citizenship, iron-clad rules that newcomers socially ...

  Astana / AFP Kazakhstan’s ageing President Nursultan Nazarbayev shifted longtime ally Karim Massimov from prime minister to security chief, amid speculation over the authoritarian leader’s eventual successor. Deputy Prime Minister Bakytzhan Sagintayev has temporarily assumed Massimov’s role, until a new government is formed in the Central Asian nation, a presidential decree said. The reshuffle may offer some clues as to ...

  Sittwe/ AFP Four years after fleeing religious riots that emptied her Muslim Rohingya neighbourhood in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, Myee Shay yearns for the trappings of a normal life: a job, a school for her children and the chance to buy her own food. But the 35-year-old, like tens of thousands of others displaced by the violence, remains trapped in a ...

Geneva / AFP The US and Russia conducted last-minute negotiations on Thursday over a fresh bid for a Syrian peace deal ahead of an expected high-level meeting in Geneva. Foreign ministers from the two powers, which support opposite sides in the five-year conflict, were poised to hold a “personal meeting” in the Swiss city to push for a peace agreement, according ...

  Tripoli / AFP Two car bombs went off in the Libyan capital Tripoli on Thursday morning, damaging nearby vehicles but causing no casualties, said a security official. The bombings hit behind the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and near the entrance to a naval base that was the headquarters of Libya’s unity government when it set up operations in the ...