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by Joanna Chiu and Laurent Thomet Agence France Presse BEIJING, China (AFP) — China’s rubber-stamp parliament kicked off its most significant meeting in a generation on Monday, preparing to offer Xi Jinping a lifetime mandate to mold the Asian giant into a global superpower. Thousands of Chinese legislators gathered in the imposing Great Hall of the People in a session that will make Xi the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, concentrating the growing might […]
SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — At least 67 people were killed by a major earthquake that devastated Papua New Guinea’s remote highlands last week, the Red Cross said Monday, with thousands homeless and without food and clean water. The recovery effort has been slow as aid workers grapple with blocked roads and power outages to reach cut-off villages after the 7.5-magnitude quake struck on February 26 in the Pacific nation’s mountainous interior. Terrified locals in the […]
DAMASCUS, Syria (AFP) — Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said Sunday his forces must push on with their campaign to retake the besieged enclave of Eastern Ghouta from rebels, despite mounting international calls to end the bloodshed. Assad’s forces have seized over a quarter of the enclave on Damascus’s eastern edges after two weeks of devastating bombardment, according to a war monitor. As the United States, Britain and France stepped up pressure on Damascus and Moscow […]
by Daniel DE CARTERET Agence France Presse MELBOURNE, Australia (AFP) — A crucial hearing opened in Melbourne Monday to determine if one of Pope Francis’ top advisers, Cardinal George Pell, will stand trial on multiple historical sexual offense charges. The 76-year-old, the most senior Catholic cleric to be charged with criminal offenses linked to the Church’s long-running sexual abuse scandal, denies all the claims. He has taken leave from his role as Vatican finance chief […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — China announced on Monday an 8.1 percent defense budget increase for 2018, giving the world’s largest armed forces a boost after spending slowed in the previous two years. Beijing will spend 1.11 trillion yuan ($175 billion) on its military, according to a budget report presented before the opening session of the annual National People’s Congress, according to the official Xinhua news agency. The outlay compares with a seven percent increase last […]
by Dario Thuburn Agence France Presse ROME Italy (AFP) — Media mogul Silvio Berlusconi’s right-wing coalition was set to win the most votes but could fall short of a majority in Italy’s election Sunday, with far-right and populist parties surging ahead, according to exit polls. Berlusconi’s grouping was expected to win between 31 and 41 percent of the vote, followed by the anti-establishment Five Star Movement with 29-32 percent, according to an exit poll by […]
VATICAN CITY, Holy See (AFP) — Three nuns lashed out on Friday against the menial work they have to do for clergymen, often for no money, in a rare public criticism of the Catholic Church’s male hierarchy. “Some sisters employed by clergymen get up at dawn to prepare breakfast and only go to bed once dinner has been served, the house cleaned and the laundry washed and ironed,” said Sister Marie, who came to Rome […]
by Hui Min Neo Agence France Presse BERLIN, Germany — (AFP) Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday vowed to work with the Social Democrats for the “good of Germany”, after the centre-left party agreed to join her new coalition, but the veteran leader will go into her fourth term with weaker cards than before. Two in three of the SPD’s rank and file voting in a make or break referendum backed a new partnership with […]
LONDRES, United Kingdom (AFP) — It may have been a frosty welcome, but the dramatic birth of a British baby on a snowy roadside has warmed hearts as the country shivers in a blast of freezing weather. The child was named Sienna but quickly earned her own social media hashtag “#A66snowbaby”, referencing the name of the road in northern England where her mother Daniella Waring gave birth on Thursday morning with the help of her husband […]
ACAPULCO, Mexico (AFP) — A police commander was kidnapped in the Mexican resort city of Acapulco and then shot to death, an official said Saturday. Hector Moreno, of the Morelos state police command, was abducted when off duty by criminals in a poor area of the city and later shot to death, according to a member of the command’s staff. Guerrero state is home to popular beach resorts such as Acapulco, Ixtapa and Zihuatanejo, but is […]
by Hasan Mohammed © Agence France-Presse DOUMA, Syria (AFP) — Government forces seized territory inside Syria’s rebel Eastern Ghouta Saturday, intensifying fighting as tens of thousands of civilians in the besieged enclave near Damascus awaited urgently needed aid. On another front in Syria’s seven-year civil war, Turkish air strikes killed 36 pro-regime fighters in a Kurdish enclave near the Turkish border. Syria’s war has killed more than 340,000 people and spiralled into a complex conflict involving […]
LONDRES, United Kingdom (AFP) — Three men were charged on Saturday over a fatal explosion in central England which left five people dead and demolished a building, police said. The suspects were charged with arson with intent to endanger life and five counts of manslaughter, Leicestershire Police said in a statement. The blast on February 25 in the city of Leicester destroyed a supermarket and a two-storey flat above it. The force of the explosion […]
