August, 2016

• 25 August

  Brazil Senate opens impeachment trial against president Rousseff

  

    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 ...

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• 25 August

  Italy earthquake death toll nears 250

  

    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 ...

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• 25 August

  N Korea leader says missile test ‘greatest success’

  

    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 ...

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• 25 August

  Russia frees Japanese man held on disputed island

    Tokyo / AFP Russia has released a Japanese citizen detained on a disputed island claimed by both countries, Tokyo’s foreign ministry said on Thursday, ahead of diplomatic talks on the long-running territorial dispute. Tokyo and Moscow are working to resolve decades of tensions over four islands occupied by the Soviet Union in the closing days of World War II and ...

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• 25 August

  Colombia, FARC rebels announce historic peace deal

  

    Havana / AFP Colombia’s government and the FARC rebels have reached a historic peace agreement to end their half-century civil war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. After nearly four years of negotiations in Cuba, the two sides announced a final deal Wednesday, which President Juan Manuel Santos said would be put to a decisive referendum on October 2. ...

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• 25 August

  Hours-long attack on Kabul American university kills 16

  

    Kabul / AFP At least 16 people were killed after militants stormed the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, officials said on Thursday, in a nearly 10-hour raid that prompted anguished pleas for help from trapped students. Explosions and gunfire rocked the campus after the attack began Wednesday evening, just weeks after two university professors—an American and an Australian—were kidnapped ...

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• 25 August

  Germany mulling pullout from Turkish airbase

    Berlin / AFP Germany’s military is preparing to pull out from a Turkish airbase as a row between the two NATO partners escalates, Der Spiegel magazine reported on Thursday. Germany in December agreed to send Tornado surveillance jets and tanker aircraft to the Incirlik base in southern Turkey to aid the multinational coalition fighting the extremist IS group and ...

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• 25 August

  Iraq forces retake key town south of Mosul

    Qayrarah / AFP Iraqi forces backed by coalition air strikes on Thursday pushed the IS group from Qayyarah, a northern town considered strategic for any future offensive against the jihadists’ last stronghold of Mosul. “We control all parts of the town and managed, in very limited time, to root out IS ,” Lieutenant General Riyadh Jalal Tawfik, who commands ...

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• 25 August

  Turkey says has ‘every right to intervene’ if Syrian Kurds fail to withdraw

    Ankara / AFP Turkey on Thursday said it had “every right” to intervene if Syrian Kurdish militia do not withdraw east of the Euphrates River in Syria, as promised by the United States. The Syrian Kurdish forces “must move to the east of the Euphrates and Turkey is following this very closely,” Defence Minister Fikri Isik told NTV television. ...

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• 25 August

  Kerry in Saudi talks on Yemen, Syria, Libya

  

    JEDDAH / AFP US Secretary of State John Kerry was holding talks with his Gulf counterparts and a British minister in Saudi Arabia on Thursday on the conflicts in Yemen, Syria and Libya. The coordination with Washington’s major Middle East allies came on the eve of Syria talks in Geneva between Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. After a ...

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