August, 2016

• 28 August

  Bangladesh hunts more extremists ahead of Kerry visit

    Dhaka / AFP Bangladesh police said on Sunday they were hunting more extremist leaders after shooting dead the suspected mastermind of a deadly cafe attack, on the eve of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s first visit. Security forces stormed a militant hideout outside Dhaka on Saturday, killing three suspected extremists including the Bangladesh-born Canadian accused of organising last month’s ...

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• 28 August

  Venezuela sends oppn leader back to jail

  

    Caracas / AFP Venezuela sent an opposition leader who was under house arrest back to jail and expelled a delegation of Ecuadoran lawmakers, amid rising political tension over a campaign to recall leftist President Nicolas Maduro. Former San Cristobal mayor Daniel Ceballos was abruptly taken from his home before dawn by members of the Venezuelan intelligence services, his wife said ...

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• 28 August

  Philippine extremists stage mass jailbreak

    Marawi / AFP Muslim extremists who support the IS group staged a daring jailbreak in the southern Philippines, freeing 23 detainees in the latest in a series of mass escapes, officials said on Sunday. About 50 heavily armed members of the Maute group raided the local jail in the southern city of Marawi on Mindanao island on Saturday and freed ...

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• 28 August

  Supporters of Brazil’s Rousseff insist ‘she broke no laws’

  

    Brasília / AFP The final witnesses in the defense of suspended Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff testified late Saturday in her senate impeachment trial, days before a vote that could permanently remove her from power. Rousseff, 68, is accused of taking illegal state loans to help bridge budget shortfalls and mask the true state of the economy during her 2014 reelection ...

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• 28 August

  Cheap home renovations spiked Italy quake toll

  

    Rome / AFP Shoddy, price-cutting renovations, in breach of local building regulations, could be partly to blame for the high death toll from this week’s devastating earthquake in central Italy, according to a prosecutor investigating the disaster. As questions mount over the deaths of nearly 300 people, prosecutor Giuseppe Saieva indicated that property owners who commissioned suspected sub-standard work ...

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• 28 August

  Fiat Chrysler chief rejects complaints over US sales data

  

    Detroit / AFP Allegations that Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) falsified US sales data are meritless and the company’s financial reports are “totally accurate,” chief executive Sergio Marchionne told reporters. Marchionne said the FCA is cooperating with authorities from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Justice Department probing the company’s reporting after it was forced to restate unit ...

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• 28 August

  German minister says talks on EU-US trade deal have ‘failed’

  

    AFP Germany’s vice chancellor and economy minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Sunday that negotiations on a massive trade between the European Union and the United States were effectively dead in the water. “The talks with the US have de facto failed because we Europeans of course must not succumb to American demands,” he told public broadcaster ZDF. “Nothing is ...

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• 28 August

  Alstom gets $2.0bn deal for high-speed trains

  

    Wilmington / AFP US rail operator Amtrak on Friday awarded a $2.0 billion (1.8 billion euros) deal to French manufacturer Alstom to supply new trains for its key Acela service between Washington, New York and Boston. The landmark deal for 28 new passenger trains will boost Amtrak’s speed and capacity along its most heavily used and profitable route, with ...

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• 28 August

  CEO of Denmark’s $120bn ATP pension fund resigns

  

    Bloomberg Carsten Stendevad is resigning as chief executive officer of ATP, Denmark’s biggest pension fund, in order to move back to the U.S. The $120 billion fund has started a recruitment process to find a replacement, it said on Friday. The 43-year-old is leaving the fund to move back to the U.S. and be close to his wife’s family, ...

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• 28 August

  40 Syrians die in Turkish shelling

  

    Beirut / AFP Turkish shelling and air strikes killed at least 40 Syrians on Sunday, a monitor said, in the first significant civilian casualties in Turkey’s intensifying campaign in northern Syria. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said the army had killed 25 Kurdish “terrorists” in air strikes as part of its unprecedented operation inside Syria. The bombardments came after Ankara ...

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