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 ...