September, 2016

• 8 September

  Obama warns China over South China Sea ruling

  

    Vientiane / AFP US President Barack Obama warned Beijing on Thursday it could not ignore a tribunal’s ruling rejecting its sweeping claims to the South China Sea, driving tensions higher in a territorial row that threatens regional security. The dispute has raised fears of military confrontation between the world’s superpowers, with China determined to cement control of the strategically vital ...

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• 8 September

  US president ‘not ready to concede’ Gitmo will stay open

    Vientiane / AFP With months left in office, US President Barack Obama said on Thursday he was not ready to give up on an eight-year-old promise to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Obama urgently wants to shutter the facility before he leaves the White House at the start of next year but his efforts have been continually thwarted by ...

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• 8 September

  Paris attacks suspect Abdeslam again refuses to answer questions

    Paris / AFP Salah Abdeslam, thought to be the sole surviving member of the extremist team that attacked Paris in November 2015, on Thursday refused to answer questions from French anti-terror judges for a third time. “He exercised his right to silence,” Frank Berton told reporters after his 26-year-old client appeared at Paris’s main courthouse. The lawyer said he was ...

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• 8 September

  ‘Germany must favour Christian migrants’

  

    Berlin / AFP Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Bavarian allies have called for tougher immigration rules in Germany that favour migrants from Europe’s “Christian-occidental cultural sphere”, according to a party paper seen by AFP on Thursday. The CSU party also has demanded a ban on the Muslim full-face and partial-face veils, an end to dual citizenship, iron-clad rules that newcomers socially ...

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• 8 September

  Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev shifts PM to security chief

    Astana / AFP Kazakhstan’s ageing President Nursultan Nazarbayev shifted longtime ally Karim Massimov from prime minister to security chief, amid speculation over the authoritarian leader’s eventual successor. Deputy Prime Minister Bakytzhan Sagintayev has temporarily assumed Massimov’s role, until a new government is formed in the Central Asian nation, a presidential decree said. The reshuffle may offer some clues as to ...

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• 8 September

  Four years on, lives of Myanmar’s Rohingya still on hold

  

    Sittwe/ AFP Four years after fleeing religious riots that emptied her Muslim Rohingya neighbourhood in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, Myee Shay yearns for the trappings of a normal life: a job, a school for her children and the chance to buy her own food. But the 35-year-old, like tens of thousands of others displaced by the violence, remains trapped in a ...

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• 8 September

  US, Russia hold fresh negotiations in bid to push for Syria peace deal

  

  Geneva / AFP The US and Russia conducted last-minute negotiations on Thursday over a fresh bid for a Syrian peace deal ahead of an expected high-level meeting in Geneva. Foreign ministers from the two powers, which support opposite sides in the five-year conflict, were poised to hold a “personal meeting” in the Swiss city to push for a peace agreement, according ...

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• 8 September

  Two car bombs hit Libya’s Tripoli, no casualties

    Tripoli / AFP Two car bombs went off in the Libyan capital Tripoli on Thursday morning, damaging nearby vehicles but causing no casualties, said a security official. The bombings hit behind the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and near the entrance to a naval base that was the headquarters of Libya’s unity government when it set up operations in the ...

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• 8 September

  India pledges to join climate deal this year

    Vientiane / AFP India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday pledged to formally join the Paris climate change agreement this year, a potentially major step toward the pact entering into force. After a meeting with President Barack Obama, a champion of the deal, in Vientiane, the White House said the two leaders had made a joint commitment “to join ...

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• 8 September

  Obama, Duterte clash over brutal crime war

  

    Vientiane /AFP US President Barack Obama urged Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday to conduct his crime war “the right way”, as the pair clashed at an Asian summit over the crackdown that has claimed 3,000 lives. The showdown was a fitting climax to a brutal few days of diplomacy that began with the famously acid-tongued Duterte branding Obama ...

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