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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump questioned whether his Democratic rival Kamala Harris is “Black” during a contentious appearance at the country’s largest annual gathering of Black journalists yesterday.“Is she Indian or is she Black?” Trump said of his opponent in the presidential race, drawing a smattering of jeers. “She was Indian all the way, and all of a sudden she made a turn and became a Black person.”Harris, whose mother was Indian and whose father is Black, is the first Black and the first Asian American US vice-president.Since launching her White House campaign earlier this month, Harris has faced a barrage of sexist and racist attacks online, while Republican Party leaders have urged lawmakers to refrain from personal attacks and focus on her policy positions.The interview — in front of a gathering of about 1,000 journalists — started on a tense note, when ABC News reporter Rachel Scott asked Trump to explain why Black voters should support him despite a histor...

If Kamala Harris wins the US presidential election she will make history — and so will her husband Doug Emhoff.The ebullient 59-year-old lawyer will be the first-ever First Gentleman if Harris, succeeds in becoming the first woman president in the United States’ nearly two-and-a-half-century existence.Emhoff has already got used to blazing something of a trail of his own alongside his trailblazing wife, who’s also 59.He has leaned into his role as the first Second Gentleman, proving an energetic campaigner and fierce defender of Harris in her initially bumpy tenure as the first female, Black and South Asian vice-president.In yet another milestone, Emhoff is also the first Jewish spouse of an American president or vice-president, taking a very visible role in President Joe Biden’s administration combating anti-Semitism.He is now enthusiastic about the prospect of following in the footsteps of famous Democratic first spouses, like Jackie Kennedy, Michelle Obama and Jill Biden — but as th...

The US yesterday pledged funding of $500mn for the Philippines’ military and coast guard in a big show of support for Manila as it faces Chinese actions in disputed waters in the South China Sea.Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin met their Philippine counterparts in Manila to reaffirm Washington’s unwavering commitment to its oldest treaty ally in Asia.“This level of funding is unprecedented, and it sends a clear message of support for the Philippines, from the Biden-Harris administration, the US Congress and the American people,” Austin said in joint press conference following security talks.Ahead of their meetings, Blinken and Austin met with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr who has moved the Philippines closer to Washington since he replaced Rodrigo Duterte, who was openly hostile to the Americans and pursued warmer ties with China during his six-year term.“I’m always very happy that these communication lines are very open so that all the things that w...

French climber Benjamin Vedrines summited Pakistan’s K2 in record time on Sunday, his team told AFP, reaching the top of the world’s second-highest mountain in just under 11 hours.The 32-year-old specialist in high-speed ascents — made without the aid of oxygen — left K2 base camp just after midnight on Saturday and reached the summit 10 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds later.The ascent slashes by more than half the previous record for climbing K2 without the aid of bottled oxygen, completed in 23 hours by fellow Frenchman Benoit Chamoux in 1986.Vedrines attempted the summit in 2022 but was forced to turn back after suffering from hypoxia, a lack of oxygen in the blood caused by thin air at high altitudes.“I took my revenge on this mountain,” Vedrines said in a voice message shared with AFP. “But above all I wanted to reconcile with it by doing things with maturity.”“It was very symbolic for me because I was returning in my footsteps to where I experienced those very unique moments,” h...

A knife attack in northern England yesterday wounded at least eight people, reportedly including children, emergency services said.Police said armed officers detained a man and seized a knife after being called to a property in Southport, near Liverpool in northwest England.“There are a number of reported casualties,” police said in a statement.The North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) said it had “treated eight patients with stab injuries who have been taken to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Aintree University Hospital and Southport and Formby hospital.”Alder Hey Children’s Hospital said: “We can confirm that the trust has declared a major incident.”Local business owner Colin Parry, one of the people who called police, told the domestic Press Association news agency that he believed several “young girls” had been stabbed.Bare Varathan, who owns a local shop, told PA he saw “seven to 10 kids” who were “injured, bleeding”, adding that he saw they had been stabbed.Prime Minister Keir Starm...

Foreign ministers from Australia, India, Japan and the US yesterday said they were seriously concerned about intimidating and dangerous manoeuvres in the South China Sea and pledged to bolster maritime security in the region.The joint statement came after talks between the so-called ‘Quad’ countries in Tokyo, attended by Australia’s Penny Wong, India’s Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Japan’s Yoko Kamikawa and Antony Blinken from the US.In security talks between the US and Japan on Sunday, the two allies labelled China the “greatest strategic challenge” facing the region.“We are seriously concerned about the situation in the East and South China Seas and reiterate our strong opposition to any unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion,” the ministers said in the statement, which did not directly mention China.They also expressed serious concern about the militarisation of disputed features and coercive and intimidating manoeuvres in the South China Sea, includin...

Venezuela's National Electoral Council announced on Monday, that current President Nicolas Maduro won the country's presidential elections.Maduro was re-elected after winning 51.20 percent of the vote, besting the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD) candidate Edmundo Gonzlez Urrutia, who gained more than 44 percent, according to a statement by the National Electoral Council (CNE).President Maduro's campaign said, 'Thank you. It was a victory for everyone. It was a victory that will help us build the future, and of course, we will have to wait for the results.'This marks the third term for the current Venezuelan President Nicols Maduro. Polling stations opened yesterday, Sunday, in Venezuela to allow Venezuelan citizens to cast their votes in a tense presidential election. source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/687550/international/uslatin-america/maduro-re-elected-as-venezuelas-president-with-5120-percentof-votes

Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday threatened to relaunch production of intermediate-range nuclear weapons if the United States confirmed its intention to deploy missiles to Germany or elsewhere in Europe.The United States said on July 10 that it would start deploying long-range missiles in Germany from 2026 in preparation for a longer-term deployment that will include SM-6, Tomahawk cruise missiles and developmental hypersonic weapons.In a speech to sailors from Russia, China, Algeria and India to mark Russian navy day in the former imperial capital of St Petersburg, Putin warned the United States that it risked triggering a Cold War-style missile crisis with the move.“The flight time to targets on our territory of such missiles, which in the future may be equipped with nuclear warheads, will be about 10 minutes,” Putin said.“If the United States carries out such plans, we will consider ourselves liberated from the unilateral moratorium previously adopted on the deployment of ...

Jordan’s Umm al-Jimal village has been added to Unesco’s World Heritage List, in a move hailed yesterday by the country’s tourism and antiquities minister as a “great achievement”.Unesco, which is hosting a meeting of its World Heritage Committee in New Delhi, said on X on Friday that the earliest structures uncovered at Umm al-Jimal date back to the first century CE, “when the area formed part of the Nabataean Kingdom.” It added that inscriptions in “Greek, Nabataean, Safaitic, Latin and Arabic uncovered on the site... sheds light on the changes in its inhabitants’ religious beliefs”.The village is near the Jordanian-Syrian border, 86 kilometres north of the capital Amman, and is known as “the black oasis” due to the prevalence of black volcanic rock in the area.Jordan’s Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Makram al-Qaisi said in a press conference yesterday that the inclusion of Umm al-Jimal on the World Heritage List is a “great achievement we should be proud of”. He said the minist...

Nigerian courts convicted 125 Boko Haram militants and financiers of a series of terrorism-related offences in a mass trial this week, the attorney-general’s office said.A Boko Haram insurgency has killed thousands of people and displaced millions since it began in 2009, creating a humanitarian crisis in northeastern Nigeria and putting pressure on the government to bring the conflict to an end.Kamarudeen Ogundele, the spokesman of the Attorney-General’s office, said in a statement late on Friday that “they were convicted of charges bordering on terrorism, terrorism financing, rendering material support, and cases relating to International Criminal Courts (ICC) criminality”.The last mass trials of Boko Haram suspects took place between 2017 and 2018, where 163 people were convicted and 887 set free. Ogundele added that from the previous convictions, 400 defendants who had completed their sentences were moved to a rehabilitation centre known as Operation Safe Corridor in Gombe State, no...

Climate change is driving changes in rainfall patterns across the world, scientists said in a paper published yesterday, which could also be intensifying typhoons and other tropical storms.Taiwan, the Philippines and then China were lashed by the year’s most powerful typhoon this week, with schools, businesses and financial markets shut as wind speeds surged up to 227kph. On China’s eastern coast, hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated ahead of landfall on Thursday.Stronger tropical storms are part of a wider phenomenon of weather extremes driven by higher temperatures, scientists say.Researchers led by Zhang Wenxia at the China Academy of Sciences studied historical meteorological data and found about 75% of the world’s land area had seen a rise in “precipitation variability” or wider swings between wet and dry weather. Warming temperatures have enhanced the ability of the atmosphere to hold moisture, which is causing wider fluctuations in rainfall, the researchers said in a p...

The Philippine Coast Guard yesterday raced to offload 1.4mn litres of industrial fuel oil from a sunken tanker and prevent an “environmental catastrophe” in Manila Bay.One crew member died when the MT Terra Nova sank in rough seas nearly 7km off Limay municipality early Thursday after setting out for the central city of Iloilo.An oil slick stretching several kilometres was detected in the waterway, which thousands of fishermen and tourism operators rely on for their livelihoods.Coast guard spokesman Rear Admiral Armando Balilo said yesterday the spill was “minimal” and that it appeared to be diesel fuel used to power the tanker and not the industrial fuel oil cargo.“No oil has been leaking from the tank itself, so we’re racing against time to siphon the oil so we can avoid the environmental catastrophe,” Balilo said.The coast guard has set a target of seven days to offload the cargo and prevent what Balilo warned would be the worst oil spill in Philippine history if it were to leak.Jou...

Soaring high across a gorge in the rugged Himalayas, a newly finished bridge will soon help India entrench control of Kashmir and meet a rising strategic threat from China. The Chenab Rail Bridge, the highest of its kind in the world, has been hailed as a feat of engineering linking the Kashmir valley to the vast Indian plains by train for the first time. But its completion has sparked concern among some in the territory, home to a permanent garrison of more than 500,000 soldiers. India’s military brass say the strategic benefits of the bridge to New Delhi cannot be understated. “The train to Kashmir will be pivotal in peace and in wartime,” general Deependra Singh Hooda, a retired former chief of India’s northern military command, said. The new bridge “will facilitate the movement of army personnel coming and going in larger numbers than was previously possible”, said Noor Ahmad Baba, a politics professor at the Central University of Kashmir. But, as well as soldiers, the bridge...

Typhoon Gaemi roared into southeastern China yesterday after churning across the Taiwan Strait, prompting warnings of swelling rivers, flash floods and waterlogging in cities and provinces that were hit by extreme rains just several weeks ago.Gaemi, the third and most powerful typhoon to hit China’s eastern seaboard this year, made landfall in Fujian province at 7.50pm (1150GMT) after whipping Taiwan with gusts of up to 227kph, some of the strongest winds recorded in the Western Pacific Ocean.Ahead of its arrival, 240,800 people in Fujian were evacuated.Despite slightly weakening since its landfall in Fujian’s Putian, a city of over 3mn, Gaemi and its giant cloud-bands are forecast to unleash intense rainfall in at least 10 Chinese provinces in the coming days.The arrival of Gaemi has drawn comparisons with Typhoon Doksuri last year, which triggered historic flooding as far north as Beijing and caused nationwide losses of nearly $30bn.Authorities said water levels in the lower reaches ...

Air traffic at Germany's Frankfurt airport has been temporarily suspended after activists from the climate group Last Generation managed to gain access to the airport grounds, police said on Thursday morning.According to dpa, several protesters entered through a fence in the early hours and glued themselves to the tarmac at Germany's biggest airport.'All security authorities are currently working to resolve disruptions as quickly as possible,' a spokesman for federal police stationed at the airport said.Six Last Generation activists had gained access to the airport's runways, calling for an end to fossil fuel use by 2030. source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/687340/international/germanys-frankfurt-airport-suspends-flights-after-climate-activistsstormed-airport-grounds

The 20-year-old man suspected of trying to kill former president Donald Trump conducted an online search of the John F Kennedy assassination on the day he registered for Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, FBI Director Christopher Wray said yesterday.“Analysis of a laptop that the investigation ties to the shooter reveals that on July 6, he did a Google search for ‘how far away was Oswald from Kennedy’,” Wray said in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.“That is the same day that it appears that he registered for the Butler rally,” he said, adding that suspect Thomas Crooks had become “very focused on Trump and his rally” at the time.Former president Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, by Lee Harvey Oswald.Wray said Crooks, a nursing home aide, fired at least eight rounds from his rooftop position near the July 13 rally, wounding the Republican presidential candidate in the ear, killing one rally attendee and wounding two others.Crooks used an ...

India’s government assigned billions of dollars for job creation and regions run by key coalition partners in a budget aimed at cementing the coalition and winning back voters after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election setback.Tax changes unveiled in the budget included a higher levy on equity investments to allay concerns the market might be overheating and lower taxes for foreign companies to attract more investment.The $576bn in total outlays included $32bn for rural programmes, $24bn to be spent over five years to create jobs, and more than $5bn for two states ruled by coalition partners.“In this budget, we particularly focus on employment, skilling, small businesses, and the middle class,” Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said yesterday.The government will also implement reforms across factors of production, including land and labour, she said.Subsequent budgets would continue to focus on those areas, Sitharaman said while presenting her seventh annual budget.Despite the new...

India’s Union Budget 2024 is a thought-provoking one that balances the needs of today while establishing the priorities of tomorrow.At the same time, one could always view it as a budget that could have done more in addressing immediate concerns.The focus on promoting entrepreneurship, skilling, and MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises ) is commendable. The scheme offering internship opportunities in the top 500 companies will enable students to effectively translate their academic knowledge into practical professional skills, facilitating a smoother transition into the workforce.MSMEs have a vital role to play in the country’s development going forward and the moves taken in this budget to increase credit access and financial support will help these companies to scale and modernise. The initiatives to ensure credit access to MSMEs during their stress period and increase the limit in MUDRA (Micro Units Development and Refinance Agency) loans are welcome ones.I am also happy to se...

To get his family the water they need for drinking, bathing and laundry, Ahmed al-Shanbari steels himself for a lengthy search through the north of the Gaza Strip.Shanbari said most of the wells near his makeshift shelter in the Jabalia refugee camp have been destroyed.And the water distribution network barely works after more than nine months of war that has devastated Gaza’s infrastructure.Water was already scarce before the conflict erupted in October, and most of it was undrinkable. The 2.4mn population relies on an increasingly polluted and depleted aquifer, humanitarian agencies say. To collect what little of the fetid supply remains can take Shanbari four hours in sweltering heat.He sets off with his three children, buckets in hand, weaving through mounds of rubble and trash in search of a working spigot or an aid agency hose connected to a water truck.“We are suffering greatly to obtain water,” he said.Shanbari said the situation has worsened since heavy fighting broke out in J...

US Vice-President Kamala Harris won the crucial backing of Democratic heavyweight Nancy Pelosi to lead the party against Donald Trump in November after Joe Biden’s stunning exit from the 2024 race.Biden’s departure was the latest shock to a White House race that included the near-assassination of former president Trump by a gunman during a campaign stop and the nomination of Trump’s fellow hardliner, US Senator J D Vance, as his running mate.As the endorsements stacked up, the 59-year-old Harris made her first public appearance since Biden’s announcement in a ceremony at the White House where she warmly praised the outgoing president’s “unmatched” achievements.However, while she steered away from any triumphalism, Harris will now feel she has one hand on the prize after securing the support of Pelosi, the former US House speaker and a prime mover in moves to oust the 81-year-old Biden.“With immense pride and limitless optimism for our country’s future, I endorse Vice President Kamala H...

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s decision not to back Ursula von der Leyen as European Commission chief was driven by fear of losing right-wing grassroots supporters, analysts say, but may curb her influence over EU choices.The European Parliament elected von der Leyen for a second five-year term on Thursday to lead the bloc’s executive with support from centre-right, centre-left, liberal and green groups. She got 401 votes, with 284 against in a secret ballot in the 720-member chamber.Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, part of the European Conservatives and Reformists group (ECR), revealed its decision after the vote when it said von der Leyen had shifted too far left, particularly on green pledges.Even though von der Leyen did not need Meloni’s 24 lawmakers to win, the vote marked a shift from the prime minister’s past efforts to keep good relations with the Commission as Rome grapples with mammoth public debt.“Meloni cares a lot about being consistent. She had said she would never v...

Authorities in southern India’s Kerala state are taking preventive steps after the death of a 14-year-old boy from the Nipah virus and the identification of 60 persons in the high-risk category, the state’s health minister said yesterday.Parts of Kerala are among those most at risk globally for outbreaks of the virus, a Reuters investigation showed last year. Nipah, which comes from fruit bats and animals, can cause a lethal, brain-swelling fever in humans.Nipah is classified as a priority pathogen by the World Health Organisation (WHO) because of its potential to trigger an epidemic. There is no vaccine to prevent infection and no treatment to cure it.“The infected boy died on Sunday after a cardiac arrest,” Veena George, the state health minister told local TV reporters, speaking in the Malayalam language.Earlier, in a statement on Saturday, she said as part of Nipah control, the government has issued orders to set up 25 committees to identify and isolate affected people.Dr Anoop Kum...

One of the world’s youngest air forces is taking part in war games alongside cutting-edge stealth fighter jets as the Pacific Island nation of Papua New Guinea (PNG) boosts defence ties with Australia and the United States.Papua New Guinea’s trainee pilots have queued for take-off with US F-22 Raptor and Australian Joint Strike Fighter jets in northern Australia this week in the 20-nation “Pitch Black” war games.“It is a learning experience for us as a small air force and it helps to build our air force,” said Major Randall Hepota, one of six PNG Air Force pilots flying three small P-750 turboprop aircraft.At home, the New Zealand-made plane can take off and land in very short spaces and transports supplies and troops to border areas in treacherous mountain terrain.Lieutenant-Colonel Douglas Vavar, the commanding officer of PNG Air Wing, said Pitch Black offered exposure to the world’s best pilots and was helping PNG learn how to integrate with a large coalition force.“We are becoming ...

Thousands of people rallied on Friday against a planned operation by the Pakistan military to root out militants along the Afghan border, with at least one protester killed when gunfire broke out, officials and witnesses said. More than 10,000 people waving white flags and calling for peace gathered for the rally in Bannu – 40km (25 miles) from Afghanistan – where a suicide bomber on Monday rammed an explosive-packed vehicle into an army enclave, killing eight Pakistani troops. “Military operations have been ongoing for 20 years, yet peace has not been established,” protester Jamaluddin Wazir told AFP. “Military operations can never be a substitute for peace.” Pakistan’s government announced earlier this year, without giving details, that the military would launch a new campaign to counter violence in areas along the border with Afghanistan, which has surged following the Taliban government’s return to power. Friday’s protest turned violent when crowds reached the walls of an army ...

Two large oil tankers were on fire yesterday after colliding near Singapore, the world’s biggest refuelling port, with two crew members airlifted to hospital and others rescued from life rafts, authorities and one of the tanker owners said.Singapore is Asia’s biggest oil trading hub and the world’s largest bunkering port. Its surrounding waters are vital trade waterways between Asia and Europe and the Middle East and among the busiest global sea lanes.The Singapore-flagged tanker Hafnia Nile and the Sao Tome and Principe-flagged tanker Ceres I were about 55km northeast of the Singaporean island of Pedra Branca on the eastern approach to the Singapore Straits, the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) said.The 22 crew of the Hafnia Nile and the 40 on the Ceres I were all accounted for, the MPA said, which was alerted to the fire at 6.15am (2215 GMT)The owner of Hafnia Nile confirmed the vessel was involved in a collision with Chinese owned Ceres I. Photographs released by the S...

Pol Dominguez, 11, is enjoying his summer holidays in Spain. But unlike most children his age, he does not spend his days at the beach or pool, instead staying indoors to avoid ultraviolet radiation that could be deadly for him. Dominguez has Xeroderma Pigmentosum (XP), a rare disease that affects his skin and eyes. Patients are unable to repair their DNA from solar damage, which puts them at high risk of developing cancer.His case is extreme: even brief exposure to sunlight causes serious burns. With only 2.3 cases per million live births in Western Europe — and around 100 people living with XP in Spain — the hereditary disease is usually detected early when burns appear.Dominguez and his family, who live in Barcelona, have radically modified their habits to avoid exposure to UV radiation. To avoid severe sunburns and blistering, Dominguez wears a hood, jacket, sunglasses and gloves outside, even in winter.In summer, he stays indoors as much as possible, but when he does need to leave...

Unrelenting heat is blanketing swathes of southern and eastern Europe, with dozens of cities on red alert as scorching temperatures fuel wildfires, strain power grids, and make daily life unbearable.There was no let-up yesterday as the mercury again hovered near or above 40 degrees Celsius in many countries, with worse expected in the coming days.Europe is no stranger to baking summer spells but climate change is making heatwaves longer, stronger and more frequent, sustaining dangerously high temperatures even at night.Greece, which recorded its earliest-ever heatwave this summer, withered through its 11th-straight day above 40C yesterday.Nights in the capital Athens have hit 30C as heat rolls unbroken from one day to the next.Yesterday, authorities closed the Acropolis, the country’s most visited attraction, during the hottest hours for a second day in a row.Some outdoor work, like construction and meal delivery, have also been suspended.Cooler weather isn’t expected until July 26.In ...

As questions swirl over how a would-be assassin managed to get anywhere near Donald Trump, some conservatives are blaming the Secret Service for hiring the women agents who threw themselves into the line of fire to protect the former president.Women are too short, too weak — and in some cases, too overweight — to protect someone like Trump, according to people on the US political right who accused the Secret Service of “woke” hiring practices they say nearly got the former president killed.Several women can be seen among the black-suited, sunglass-clad agents racing to shield Trump with their bodies as the gunman opened fire at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, before hustling him from the stage and into a waiting car and safety.But they, along with their boss Kimberly Cheatle — only the second-ever woman director of the federal agency tasked with protecting presidents current, former and would-be — are now caught in the intense scrutiny over the nearly catastrophic attack.“There sh...

Extreme wildfires are spreading across Russia and North America and shrouding swathes of the region in smoke, the EU’s climate monitor said yesterday as it warned of worse to come.Copernicus said unusually hot and dry conditions were causing blazes in Siberia, Canada and Alaska and a “remarkable intensification” of planet-heating gases as swathes of forest burn.A column of smoke containing ash and harmful particles from wildfires in eastern Russia had drifted 3,000km across parts of eastern Mongolia, northeastern China and northern Japan.The “anomalously high” levels of some airborne pollutants over that region were many times globally accepted safe limits, said the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS).Parts of Canada were on evacuation alert as flames ripped through western provinces, while nearly 250,0000 hectares in Alaska had been torched this year in an early start to the wildfire season.“The current wildfires are already at record levels in some regions and with the se...

Pakistan’s government will seek to ban the political party of jailed ex-prime minister Imran Khan, the information minister said yesterday, days after twin court decisions that favoured the former leader.Former cricket star Khan was ousted in 2022, before launching a comeback campaign in which he criticised Pakistan’s powerful generals and drew massive crowds onto streets across the country.His arrest last year saw supporters storm military buildings and unleashed a crackdown against his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, culminating in elections marred by allegations of pre-poll rigging.Khan has been jailed for nearly a year, but last week an Islamabad judge overturned his illegal marriage conviction while the Supreme Court awarded PTI more parliamentary seats — a move set to make them the largest party in the National Assembly.Both cases were considered a major blow to the coalition government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.Information Minister Attaullah Tarar told reporters the...

Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili (pictured) yesterday asked the country’s top court to annul a controversial “foreign influence” law that has sparked mass protests and condemnation from the West.Initiated by the ruling Georgian Dream party, the law was adopted in May despite weeks of unprecedented street protests and warnings it would undermine Tbilisi’s bid for EU membership.The law, which critics have compared to repressive Russian legislation used to silence dissent, forces groups receiving at least a fifth of their funding from abroad to register as “organisations pursuing the interests of a foreign power”.Yesterday, the pro-Western president Zurabishvili filed a complaint to Georgia’s constitutional court asking it “to suspend the law’s enactment and to annul it definitively”, her parliamentary secretary, Giorgi Mskhiladze, told reporters.He called the law “unconstitutional” because it contradicts a provision requiring the authorities to “take all measures within the scope o...

Rival students in Bangladesh clashed yesterday leaving at least 100 people injured, as demonstrators opposing quotas for coveted government jobs battled counter-protesters loyal to the ruling party, police said.Police and witnesses said hundreds of anti-quota protesters and students backing the ruling Awami League party battled for hours on Dhaka University campus, hurling rocks, fighting with sticks and beating each other with iron rods.Some carried machetes while others threw petrol bombs, witnesses said.The quota system reserves more than half of well-paid civil service posts totalling hundreds of thousands of government jobs for specific groups, including children of heroes from the country’s 1971 liberation war from Pakistan.“They clashed with sticks and threw rocks at each other,” local police station chief Mostajirur Rahman said.Masud Mia, a police inspector, said “around 100 students including women” were injured, and had been taken to hospital. “More people are coming”, Mia ad...

A small landlocked African nation playing in the big league: with military might, image branding and political influence, Rwanda under President Paul Kagame has become a major strategic player with tentacles spread far and wide.De facto leader since the 1994 genocide and running for a fourth term as president in elections Monday, Kagame has established a sphere of influence far outweighing Rwanda’s size to develop the country and entrench his own power base.Unlike many other African nations, “Rwanda is pursuing a real foreign policy strategy”, says Paul-Simon Handy, East Africa director at the Institute for Security Studies. This strategy is similar to “smart power”, says Handy, combining hard power — the use of military and economic means for influence — and soft power.The Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) is one of the pillars of this policy, though its role is contradictory. The Democratic Republic of Congo has for years accused its neighbour of fomenting instability in the east and suppor...