WORLD HEADLINES
By Erik Kirschbaum BERLIN (Reuters) – Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has governed Germany since 2005, has decided to run for a fourth term and has started planning her 2017 re-election campaign, Der Spiegel news magazine said on Saturday in an unsourced report. Peter Tauber, secretary general of Merkel’s Christian Democrat (CDU) party and effectively its campaign manager, declined to comment directly when asked by Reuters about the report. Merkel, who
By Anca Ulea and Ebrahim Harris PARIS/KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Airplane debris that washed up on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion and may belong to a vanished Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 arrived in France on Saturday for investigators to study its origin. An Air France flight carrying the debris landed at Orly airport near Paris at 0417 GMT (12.17 a.m. ET), and it was then transferred by road to
By Saud Mehsud and Jibran Ahmad DERA ISMAIL KHAN/ PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – The new Afghan Taliban leader appealed for unity in the insurgency in his first public message released on Saturday amid reports his predecessor’s family members opposed his selection. The new head, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, was deputy for several years to the elusive one-eyed former leader Mullah Omar, who served as a unifying figure and a spiritual
A Kurdish militia fighting Islamic State in Syria accused Turkey on Saturday of targeting it at least four times in the past week and called on U.S-led forces to “clarify” their approach toward Ankara in light of this. The accusations highlight the tensions surrounding Turkey’s entry into the fight against Islamic State. It made a turnaround last week by granting U.S-led forces access to its air bases and bombarding targets
US Secretary of State John Kerry flew to Egypt on Saturday to relaunch a strategic partnership with Washington’s longtime ally, at the start of a regional mini-tour, a correspondent said. Kerry’s trip, which ends on August 8, will not include Israel, one of Washington’s closest allies and a fierce critic of the July 14 deal between the Islamic republic and world powers. During his stop in Cairo, Kerry is to
KAZAN, Russia (AP) — British swimmer Adam Peaty faces an uphill battle to have his 50-meter breaststroke world record ratified.
GAUHATI, India (AP) — Police on Saturday were searching for 21 people feared dead in a mudslide triggered by torrential monsoon rains in India’s remote mountainous northeast region.
BERLIN (AP) — Swiss authorities say a 77-year-old German woman has been trampled to death by a herd of cows in the Alps near the resort town of Laax.
By Jibran Ahmad PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – At the Taliban meeting this week where Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour was named as the Islamist militant group’s new head, several senior figures in the movement, including the son and brother of late leader Mullah Omar, walked out in protest. The display of dissent within the group’s secretive core is the clearest sign yet of the challenge Mansour faces in uniting a group
By Joe Brock SAINT-DENIS-DE-LA-REUNION, France (Reuters) – Malaysia is “almost certain” that plane debris found on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean is from a Boeing 777, the deputy transport minister said on Thursday, heightening the possibility it could be wreckage from missing Flight MH370. The object, which appeared to be part of a wing, was being sent to offices of France’s BEA crash investigation agency in Toulouse to verify
