by Alice RITCHIE British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will call an election for October 14 if MPs vote against his Brexit strategy, a top official said Monday on the eve of a parliamentary showdown. MPs from Johnson’s own Conservative Party are preparing to join opposition lawmakers in a vote on Tuesday to try to force him […]
by Jacques CLEMENT Denise Ho has been pulled from concerts, her records are banned in China and she has been smeared as “poison”, but the Cantopop star says standing with the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement outshines all the damage to her career. The short-haired 42-year-old is a rare and instantly recognisable face among the masked […]
by Ian Timberlake At least five people have been killed in a mass shooting that left 21 victims in the US state of Texas on Saturday, police said. “We have at least 21 victims, 21 shooting victims and at least five deceased at this point in time,” Odessa Police Chief Michael Gerke told reporters. Three police […]
President Hassan Rouhani spoke with French counterpart Emmanuel Macron Saturday, warning him Iran would take the next step in reducing its nuclear commitments unless Europe lives up to its own undertakings. Tensions have spiked in the Gulf since May last year when President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from a nuclear deal between Iran […]
by Yan ZHAO and Jasmine LEUNG Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong on Saturday defied a ban on rallying, the arrests of leading activists and rising threats from China, to take to the streets for a 13th straight weekend. Police had banned the demonstration on security grounds, then organisers had cancelled it, […]
by Anup Sharma Security was tightened Friday in the Indian state of Assam for the release of a citizens’ list that could potentially lead to several million people becoming stateless, most of them Muslims, in a process the government wants to replicate nationwide. Those left off the National Register of Citizens (NRC), due to be […]
by Jordi Miro, with Sebastian Smith in Washington President Jair Bolsonaro said Friday that Europe has “nothing to teach” Brazil about preserving the environment, as the country aligns itself with the United States over fires raging in the Amazon rainforest. The far-right leader’s comments come as the latest official data show thousands of new fires […]
AFP is republishing this feature which has been selected by the agency’s chief editors as one of the best of the week. by Deborah COLE A tour group handpicked by the far-right party Alternative for Germany touched off a scandal last summer while visiting the former Nazi concentration camp Sachsenhausen north of Berlin. A few […]
Leading Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong was arrested Friday, his party said, a day ahead of a planned rally in the city that has been banned by police. His arrest came just hours after the reported detention at Hong Kong’s airport of a vocal independence campaigner, and as Beijing continues to pile pressure on […]
