Kiev / AP Seventeen people died when a makeshift home for elderly people outside the Ukrainian capital Kiev caught fire in the early hours of Sunday, the latest tragedy to shake the conflict-riven country. The fire tore through the two-storey shelter for the elderly which is in the village of Litochky, located some 50 kilometres (31 miles) north of …

  Caracas / AFP Venezuelan officials and opposition foes have held separate secret meetings in the Dominican Republic with a group of ex-world leaders seeking a way out of political crisis, officials said, as an ex-military reserve leader was shot dead. Representatives of both sides of Venezuela’s political standoff met former Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, former Dominican …

Vienna / AFP Austria’s far-right is probing “countless” cases of fraud in last week’s presidential election that saw its candidate lose by a narrow margin, the party chief was quoted as saying on Sunday. “We are going to get the countless indications (of irregularities) looked at by an independent, neutral body and then decide” whether to challenge the result, Freedom …