Chisinau / AFP Moldova’s presidential election is set to go to a second round, preliminary results showed on Monday, after the leading pro-Russian candidate failed to secure an outright win in the ex-Soviet state. Moldova went to the polls Sunday in its first popular presidential election since the 1990s, seen as a tug-of-war between supporters of closer relations with Russia ...

  Bartalla / AFP Iraqi special forces advanced on the eastern city limits of Mosul on Monday, tightening the noose as the offensive to retake the IS group stronghold entered its third week. Elite counter-terrorism forces were facing mortar fire as they pushed from the Christian town of Bartalla towards Mosul’s eastern suburbs, AFP correspondents at the front said. As an ...

  Ankara / AFP Turkish police detained the editor-in-chief of the opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet, state media reported on Monday, while the daily said several of its writers were taken into police custody. Murat Sabuncu was detained while authorities searched for executive board chairman Akin Atalay and writer Guray Oz, the official news agency Anadolu said. The daily said Oz had in ...

  Kabul /AFP Afghanistan is losing a multi-billion dollar war on drugs as it combats terrorism, a minister warned, denouncing a lack of political will and dwindling foreign aid to fight narcotics. The comments from Baz Mohammad Ahmadi, deputy minister of interior for counter-narcotics, come after the UN last week reported a 10 percent jump in opium cultivation this year ...

  Beirut / AFP Lebanon’s Michel Aoun, a former general backed by the powerful Hezbollah movement as well as longtime rivals, was elected president on Monday ending a political vacuum of more than two years. The deeply divided parliament took four rounds of voting to elect Aoun, whose supporters flooded streets and squares across the country to celebrate his victory. ...

  Tehran / AFP Iran’s foreign ministry has rejected accusations from the United States that it has been shipping arms to the Shiite Huthi rebels in Yemen, according to media reports on Monday. A US admiral said on Thursday that warships from the US Navy and allied nations had intercepted four weapons shipments from Iran to the Arabian Peninsula country ...

  Bangui / AFP The Central African Republic’s capital was rocked by deadly overnight clashes as France’s defence minister was due on Monday to formally end a military operation there, hailing it as a “success”. Local sources said about 10 people had been killed in a settling of scores between armed groups Sunday night in Bangui’s restive Muslim PK5 neighbourhood. The ...

  Lagos / AFP Human Rights Watch on Monday accused Nigerian officials of sexually exploiting women and girls living in camps for victims of Boko Haram in the restive northeast. HRW said it had in July documented 43 cases of women and girls in seven internally displaced persons’ (IDP) camps in Maiduguri, the epicentre of the seven-year Islamist insurgency, who had ...

  Tokyo / AFP Japan Airlines on Monday slashed its full-year earnings outlook, and warned its fiscal first-half net profit nosedived owing to a slump in its international business. While falling oil prices have helped carriers’ profits — fuel is often an airline’s single-biggest expense — the loss of a fuel surcharge imposed to deal with previously sky-high crude prices ...

  Dubai / Emirates Business British Airways (BA) launched a direct flight between Muscat and London, further adding convenience to customers travelling between the two regions. The UK carrier, which first began flying to Oman in 1972, inaugurated the new service with a water cannon salute as it landed at Muscat International Airport on Monday. Customers, who previously flew between the ...