Politics

  Warsaw / AFP Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said on Tuesday that an aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had suggested delaying a proposed meeting between the two leaders in Moscow on Friday. “Netanyahu’s representative proposed to delay this meeting to a later date. So the meeting will not happen,” Abbas said at a joint press conference in Warsaw ...

  Kabul /AFP Explosions rang out on Tuesday during an hours-long attack on an international charity in Kabul, the latest assault in a wave of violence in the Afghan capital that has killed at least 24 people and wounded dozens. The assault on CARE International began late Monday with a massive car bombing, just hours after the Taliban carried out ...

  Srinagar / AFP A protester died from pellet gun injuries during fresh clashes with security forces on Tuesday in Indian Kashmir, a hospital official said, a day after the government said it would replace the weapons. The 21-year-old man was killed during clashes in Anantnag district southeast of the main city of Srinagar, in which police said scores were ...

  Vientiane / AFP President Barack Obama pledged on Tuesday to dramatically increase US efforts to clear millions of bombs secretly dropped on tiny Laos by American planes a generation ago, saying the clean-up was a “moral obligation”. Laos became the world’s most-bombed country per capita from 1964 to 1973 as Washington launched a secret CIA-led war to cut supplies flowing ...

  Seoul / AFP Flooding following heavy rain has killed 60 people and left over 44,000 homeless in North Korea, the United Nations said on Tuesday, after the country reported that a northeastern river suffered its worst-ever flood. Pyongyang said on Friday the Tumen river, which partially marks the border with China and Russia, experienced the biggest flood ever recorded due ...

  Vientiane / AFP Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has vowed to personally tear apart and eat Abu Sayyaf militants, in a bloodthirsty vow of revenge for deadly attacks. “They will pay. When the time comes, I will eat you in front of people,” Duterte told an audience of Filipinos late on Monday night while in Laos for a regional summit. “If ...

  Narathiwat / AFP A four-year-old girl and her father were among three killed on Tuesday when a bomb hidden in a motorcycle’s fuel tank exploded outside a school in Thailand’s insurgency-plagued south. The device went off as pupils and teachers filed into the school in the Tak Bai district of Narathiwat province for the start of the day. Two of ...

  Sittwe / AFP Hundreds of Buddhists jeered former UN chief Kofi Annan as he arrived in Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state on Tuesday to examine a bitter religious conflict that has displaced tens of thousands of Muslim Rohingya. Annan has been tasked by the de facto leader of Myanmar’s new government, Aung San Suu Kyi, to head a commission charged with ...

  Libreville/ AFP Pressure mounted on Gabon’s President Ali Bongo over his disputed poll victory on Tuesday as his justice minister resigned over the results and former colonial ruler France suggested a recount. With Bongo claiming victory by a wafer-thin margin of some 6,000 votes, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls proposed recounting the ballots. “There needs to be a clear electoral ...

  Damascus / AFP A string of bomb attacks hit across mostly government-controlled areas of Syria on Monday, killing several dozen people including at least 35 in President Bashar Al-Assad’s coastal stronghold of Tartus, state media said. At least 48 people died in the multiple blasts, with dozens also wounded in the double bombing outside of Tartus city, which is home ...