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Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abbadi has “retired”  the army’s chief of staff, the most senior officer removed since rebel fighters  overran large parts of the country last year, his spokesman has said. General Babaker Zebari “has been retired” on Abbadi’s orders, Saad  al-Hadithi told the AFP news agency on Monday, without providing further details. Military sources say a Kurdish general ...

Greece’s Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has urged voters to soundly reject austerity proposals by the troubled country’s lenders, as thousands of his supporters rallied in the capital, Athens. “We ask you to reject it with all the might of your soul, with the greatest margin possible,” he said on Monday. “The greater the participation and the rejection of this deal, ...

At least 30 people have been killed in a military transport plane crash in a residential area of the Indonesian city of Medan, officials say. Local TV reported that the Hercules crashed into two houses and a car and burst into flames. Military spokesman Fuad Basya told the BBC that the plane came down soon after take-off and that there ...

In the ongoing debate over the significance of the Confederate flag in the United States, Indian American Nikki Haley has emerged as a civil rights champion. Haley has come a long way, from being unable to qualify to become either the white or the black pageant queen and facing ethnic slurs from her own party when standing for elections, to ...

Last year he visited Athens, this year Brussels. The European Union is China’s largest trading partner and Premier Li Keqiang comes twice a year. On this occasion, he started in Brussels with the annual China-EU summit with official visits to Belgium and France tacked on. The timing could be better. At the European Commission, his host President Jean Claude Juncker ...

A gunman disguised as a tourist opened fire at a Tunisian hotel on Friday with a rifle he had hidden in an umbrella, killing 39 people including Britons, Germans and Belgians as they lounged at the beach in an attack claimed by Islamic State. Terrified tourists ran for cover after the gunfire and an explosion erupted at the Imperial Marhaba ...

Eurozone finance ministers have rejected a Greek request to extend a bailout programme beyond 30 June. A Eurogroup statement said Greece had broken off negotiations over a new bailout deal “unilaterally”. Late on Friday, Greek PM Alexis Tsipras called a surprise referendum for 5 July over the terms of any new deal. Greece has to pay €1.6bn (£1.1bn) to the ...

The death toll from a suicide attack on a Shia mosque during Friday prayers in the Kuwaiti capital has risen to at least 25, the interior ministry says. Another 202 people were wounded, it added. Images circulating online show bodies on the mosque floor amid debris. The blast hit the Imam Sadiq Mosque in a busy area to the east ...

Smoke rises in the Syrian town of Kobani as it is seen from the Turkish border town of Suruc in Sanliurfa province, Turkey, June 25, 2015. REUTERS Islamic State fighters killed at least 145 civilians in an attack on the Syrian town of Kobani and a nearby village, in what a monitoring group described on Friday as the second worst ...

It reads like the script of a movie. Climate change campaigners go to court to force their government to take tougher action on greenhouse gas emissions. But it became reality in a Dutch court on Wednesday, when a judge ruled that The Netherlands must do more to combat the threat of climate change. As a low-lying country, the country is ...