Aleppo / AFP The Syrian army exchanged fire with rebels in battleground second city Aleppo even before the expiry at midnight on Wednesday of a Russian- and US-brokered ceasefire. Two people were wounded early Wednesday when regime aircraft strafed rebel positions in two eastern neighbourhoods of the divided city with heavy machinegun fire, an AFP correspondent reported. Late Tuesday, …

  Dhaka / AP Clashes erupted in Bangladesh on Wednesday after the execution of a top hardliner leader, heightening tension in a country reeling from a string of killings of secular and liberal activists. Motiur Rahman Nizami, leader of the Jamaat-E-Islami party, was hanged at a Dhaka jail late Tuesday for the massacre of intellectuals during the 1971 independence war …

Madrid / AFP Spain’s foreign minister on Wednesday described the EU’s deal with Turkey to stem the influx of migrants as a “botched job”, blasting Europe’s “inadequate” response to its worst migration crisis since World War II. Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said he was unhappy with leaving the solution to the crisis in the hands of a country outside the European …