Politics

  Beirut / AFP A first group of rebels and their families evacuated from the Syrian town of Daraya after four years of government siege have reached opposition-held territory, a monitor said on Saturday. At least five buses carrying fighters and their families arrived in the rebel-held city of Idlib in the northwest, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. ...

  Srinagar / AFP Police in Indian-administered Kashmir have arrested a top separatist leader, his aide said on Saturday, as the region’s chief minister met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and defended a 50-day lockdown on the region. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chief cleric and head of All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference, a political coalition opposed to the Indian rule of Kashmir, ...

  Tunis / AFP Tunisia’s new Prime Minister Youssef Chahed and members of his cabinet were sworn in on Saturday, the presidency said, after approval from parliament. The prime minister and his 26 ministers swore to “work devotedly for the good of Tunisia” and to “respect its constitution and laws”, it said. Chahed, at 40, is the country’s youngest prime ...

  Brasília / AFP The impeachment trial of Brazil’s first woman president, Dilma Rousseff, got underway on Thursday with high expectations that the suspended leader of Latin America’s biggest economy will be sacked within days. The Senate trial was opened by Supreme Court president Ricardo Lewandowski half an hour late in the blue-carpeted chamber at 9:30 am (1230 GMT). The ...

  Amatrice / AFP The death toll from a powerful earthquake in central Italy rose to 247 on Thursday amid fears many more corpses would be found in the rubble of devastated mountain villages. Rescuers sifted through collapsed masonry in the search for survivors, but their grim mission was clouded by uncertainty about exactly how many people had been staying in ...

  Seoul / AFP North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un declared a submarine-launched missile test the “greatest success”, state media said on Thursday, as the UN weighed a condemnation of the launch which appears to advance Pyongyang’s nuclear strike capability. The US mainland and the Pacific are now “within the striking range” of the North’s army, the official KCNA news agency ...

  Tokyo / AFP Russia has released a Japanese citizen detained on a disputed island claimed by both countries, Tokyo’s foreign ministry said on Thursday, ahead of diplomatic talks on the long-running territorial dispute. Tokyo and Moscow are working to resolve decades of tensions over four islands occupied by the Soviet Union in the closing days of World War II and ...

  Havana / AFP Colombia’s government and the FARC rebels have reached a historic peace agreement to end their half-century civil war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. After nearly four years of negotiations in Cuba, the two sides announced a final deal Wednesday, which President Juan Manuel Santos said would be put to a decisive referendum on October 2. ...

  Kabul / AFP At least 16 people were killed after militants stormed the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, officials said on Thursday, in a nearly 10-hour raid that prompted anguished pleas for help from trapped students. Explosions and gunfire rocked the campus after the attack began Wednesday evening, just weeks after two university professors—an American and an Australian—were kidnapped ...

  Berlin / AFP Germany’s military is preparing to pull out from a Turkish airbase as a row between the two NATO partners escalates, Der Spiegel magazine reported on Thursday. Germany in December agreed to send Tornado surveillance jets and tanker aircraft to the Incirlik base in southern Turkey to aid the multinational coalition fighting the extremist IS group and ...