Some 50 migrants were found dead in the hold of a boat off the coast of Libya on Wednesday during a rescue operation which saved 430 other people, the Italian coast guard said. A spokeswoman for the Italian coast guard said the Swedish ship Poseidon, working with the European Union’s border control agency Frontex, had gone on Wednesday to help a boat in difficulty and had found the bodies. It
The United States plans to increase the number of military and humanitarian drills it conducts in the Asia-Pacific as part of a new strategy to counter China’s rapid expansion in the South China Sea, the Philippine military said on Wednesday. Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, highlighted key aspects of the Pentagon’s freshly drafted Asia Pacific Maritime Security Strategy during talks with his Filipino counterpart, General Hernando
By Mohammad Stanekzai LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan (Reuters) – The Taliban seized a district headquarters in Afghanistan’s Helmand province on Monday despite U.S. air strikes to repel them, and two NATO soldiers were shot dead by uniformed men on an army base in the area, a stronghold for militants and opium. The district of Musa Qala fell after the Taliban over-ran police and army posts in an offensive that lasted several
JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — South Sudan President Salva Kiir on Wednesday signed a peace deal with rebels, more than 20 months after the start of fighting between the army and rebels led by his former deputy.
SAN ANTONIO DEL TACHIRA, Venezuela (AP) — More than 100 Colombians carrying their possessions on their shoulders waded knee-deep across a river back into their homeland, fleeing a Venezuelan crackdown on illegal migrants and smugglers that is generating an increasingly angry dispute between the South American neighbors.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday urged Turkey to vote for “stability” in November 1 polls, as three pro-Kurdish MPs were invited into a caretaker government in an unprecedented move. If the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) MPs accept, it will be the first time in Turkish history that representatives of a pro-Kurdish party have taken seats in the government. The repeat elections come after the ruling Justice and Development Party
Al-Qaeda militants on Wednesday blew up an army headquarters and set up checkpoints in the jihadist network’s southeastern stronghold of Mukalla, officials in Hadramawt province said. The militants had deployed in force across Mukalla after receiving information of a possible operation by a Saudi-led military coalition to help government loyalists retake the provincial capital, the officials said. The coalition of Arab states has been carrying out air strikes against Iran-backed
By Shadia Nasralla VIENNA (Reuters) – The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Tuesday it received substantive amounts of information from Iran aimed at quelling concerns its nuclear past had military elements, although it was too early to say whether any of it is new. The nuclear watchdog also warned that it will run out of money next month to monitor implementation of nuclear accords with Iran unless it
By Marton Dunai ROSZKE, Hungary (Reuters) – A surge in migrants, many of them refugees from Syria, hit Hungary’s southern border on Tuesday, passing through gaps in an unfinished barrier to a Europe groping for answers to its worst refugee crisis since World War Two. Nearing the end of a flight from war and poverty, they walked around or over coils of barbed wire strung out along Hungary’s 175-km (109-mile)
Syrian government air strikes on areas east of Damascus have killed 247 people in the last 10 days, including 50 children, and wounded 1,000 more people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday. The attacks on the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta region included Aug. 16 air strikes that killed 117 people in a marketplace in Douma, some 15 km (10 miles) northeast of the capital. The area is besieged