Caracas / AFP Facing mounting pressure from food shortages, looting and increasingly violent protests, Venezuelan authorities announced the next stage of a recall referendum against embattled President Nicolas Maduro. But Maduro’s camp said it would go to the Supreme Court to contest the process, accusing the opposition of fraud while gathering the signatures needed to call a referendum. The wranglings ...

  Manila / AFP Philippine president-elect Rodrigo Duterte does not endorse extrajudicial killings, his spokesman said on Saturday after scathing criticism from the UN chief over his plans for thousands of people to die in an unprecedented war on crime. Duterte won last month’s elections by a landslide largely due to an explosive law-and-order platform in which he pledged to ...

  Beirut/ AFP Western powers lashed out at Syria’s government, accusing regime forces of dropping barrel bombs on the town of Daraya hours after it received its first food aid in almost four years. The strikes, using crude unguided explosive devices, came as Arab-Kurdish fighters said they had encircled a stronghold of IS fighters in northern Syria, cutting off a ...