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  Ankara / AFP Iraq and Turkey on Wednesday were summoning their respective ambassadors in an increasingly acrimonious dispute between the two neighbours ahead of a planned operation to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul from extremists. Ankara called in the Iraqi ambassador while Baghdad said it had decided to summon the Turkish envoy following bitter verbal exchanges, the two ...

  Baghdad / AFP An air strike killed 21 Iraqi pro-government Sunni tribal fighters early on Wednesday in an area south of the country’s extremist-held second city Mosul, a commander and a minister said. It was unclear whether it was the Iraqi military or the US-led coalition against the IS group — the two forces flying armed aircraft in Iraq — ...

  ERBIL / Reuters The battle for Mosul will be a make-or-break moment for Iraq that could split the country along ethnic and sectarian lines, said the former regional governor who has assembled a force which will take part in the campaign. Iraq has been preparing for more than a year for its offensive to drive IS out of its ...

  Tbilisi / AFP Georgia was probing on Wednesday the attempted murder of an opposition lawmaker whose car exploded in central Tbilisi just days before parliamentary polls. Givi Targamadze, who is running for office for the ex-Soviet republic’s main opposition United National Movement (UNM) party, told journalists that an explosive device planted in the back of his car detonated on ...

  Moscow / AFP Russia on Wednesday said two of its warships were heading back to join its forces in the Mediterranean amid an upsurge in tensions with Washington over Syria. The announcement comes a day after Moscow said it had dispatched its S-300 air defence missile system to its naval facility at Tartus in Syria. The two Buyan-class corvettes ...

  Geneva/ AFP An air strike was responsible for the attack on an aid convoy in Syria that killed 18 people last month, a UN expert said on Wednesday. “With our analysis we determined it was an air strike,” said Lars Bromley, a researcher at the United Nations body UNOSAT, which collects and analyses satellite images. US officials have said ...

  The “quiet catastrophe” is particularly dismaying because it is so quiet, without social turmoil or even debate. It is this: After 88 consecutive months of the economic expansion that began in June 2009, a smaller percentage of American males in the prime working years (ages 25 to 54) are working than were working near the end of the Great ...

  The UK has put foreign doctors on notice: Their services will soon no longer be required. The government of Prime Minister Theresa May announced plans on Tuesday to make the National Health Service “self-sufficient” in the next decade. For a nation trying to burnish its image as an open and forward-looking society even as it cuts ties with Europe, ...

  Donald Trump keeps saying that the U.S. presidential election is rigged. Unlikely as this is, the perception of a hacked vote may be more dangerous than the reality. Last week, a Homeland Security Department official revealed that hackers had been poking around in the voter registration systems of more than 20 states. An earlier FBI memo disclosed ongoing investigations ...

  The online illegal wildlife trade is a roaring business today. And despite laws to stop the unholy practice, it goes on unabated. From cheetahs and bears to snakes, monkeys and mynahs, some websites advertise sale of exotic animals in blatant disregard of legislations and with unthinkable impunity. In 2014, a probe found that around 33,006 endangered wildlife and wildlife ...