Politics

Detroit /AFP Donald Trump visits Detroit on Saturday insisting he is the change agent that America’s blackest big city needs in the White House, but residents have a message for the Republican presidential nominee: Not buying it. Many here acknowledge that Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president, has fallen short in improving conditions in blighted communities. But in interviews ...

  Kuala Lumpur / AFP Malaysia reported its first locally transmitted case of the mosquito-borne Zika virus on Saturday, news likely to add to fears of a full-blown outbreak in the tropical nation. The patient was a 61-year-old male resident of the eastern Malaysian state of Sabah, the Ministry of Health said. It said local transmission was highly likely because ...

  Libreville / AFP Police arrested 1,000 people as security forces fanned out across Gabon’s capital on Thursday after a night of riots and looting that erupted when President Ali Bongo was declared winner of disputed polls. Thousands of angry protesters poured onto the streets of Libreville late Wednesday, accusing the government of stealing the election after Bongo won a second ...

  Berlin / AFP The father of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian refugee boy whose body washed ashore on a Turkish beach a year ago, on Thursday denounced the world’s failure to stop the bloodshed in his home country. “The politicians said after the deaths in my family: Never again!” the bereaved father, Abdullah Kurdi, 41, told Germany’s Bild daily. “Everyone ...

  Karkamis / AFP Turkish military experts on Thursday cleared mines from the area of the Syrian town of Jarabulus captured from extremists last week, using controlled explosions that sent clouds of dust and smoke into the sky, an AFP photographer said. Pro-Ankara Syrian rebels, backed by Turkish aviation and tanks, took Jarabulus from IS fighters in a lightning operation and ...

  Istanbul / AFP On Sunday, Nadim Fawzi Jouriyeh participated in a ceremony in Amman, Jordan, to mark the United States hitting its target of taking in 10,000 Syrian refugees in a year-old resettlement program. On Wednesday, the 47-year-old former construction worker and his family were walking grocery aisles, stocking up on roasted chicken, milk and lemons for their new ...

  Naypyidaw / AFP Delegates from one of Myanmar’s most heavily armed ethnic groups stormed out of peace talks on Thursday in an early blow to a landmark gathering aimed at ushering in a new era of peace. The five-day conference in the capital Naypyidaw has been hailed as the best chance in a generation for Myanmar to end wars ...

  Geneva / AFP The UN Syria envoy on Thursday criticised Damascus’ “strategy” of forced evacuation from Daraya following a brutal four-year government siege, warning that other besieged towns could follow. Staffan de Mistura told reporters in Geneva that there were “indications that after Daraya we may have other Darayas,” adding that “there is clearly a strategy at the moment to ...

  Beirut / AFP Demonstrators crowded the streets on Thursday in a test of strength between Venezuela’s government and opponents seeking a referendum to remove President Nicolas Maduro, raising fears of violence. Thousands of protesters dressed in white marched in the east of the capital, waving signs reading “Change now” in what the opposition dubbed “The Taking of Caracas.” A rival ...

  PRAGUE / AP The Czech Republic’s counter-intelligence agency says there’s a threat of a potential attack by radicals on Czech territory. The agency, known as BIS, says in its annual report published on Thursday that such a threat comes from militants linked to the IS group and also from the Nusra Front, Al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria. The announcement comes ...