Taipei / AFP Hundreds of Taiwanese rallied on Sunday to show support for retaining the death penalty, after the beheading of a child in a street attack shocked the island. Demonstrators dressed in black and held white roses in mourning for the four-year-old girl murdered on March 28 near a Taipei metro station. Many wore stickers reading “Death penalty is ...

BAGHDAD / Reuters A rallying cry to Iraqi Sunnis from former President Saddam Hussein’s top surviving aide aims to bolster the old ruling Baath party’s appeal with Sunni Muslims fearing new reprisals by Shi’ite militias, experts said. The footage purportedly featuring Ezzat Al-Douri was released on Thursday, the anniversary of the fall of Saddam’s Sunni-led rule when US troops stormed ...

Amsterdam / AFP Having survived perilous escapes from war zones, refugees find themselves assailed anew in Europe by germs proliferating in crowded, unsanitary camps that could become outbreak hotspots, infectious disease experts have warned. Their systems weakened by physical exhaustion, a lack of safe food, clean water and medicine, refugees are sitting-duck targets for entirely preventable diseases that can scar, ...