Italy finds 19 boat migrants dead, saves over 3,500 since Friday: navy
ROME (Reuters) – Italy’s maritime search and rescue service saved 3,500 migrants and found 19 corpses in the Mediterranean since Friday as thousands attempted to cross to Europe by boat over the weekend, the Italian navy said.
More than 250 migrants may have died in shipwreck off Libya
TRIPOLI (Reuters) – More than 250 migrants may have died when a boat sank a kilometer (half a mile) off the Libyan coast, a coastguard official said on Sunday.
Turkey’s Erdogan seen softening style not substance as president
ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Tayyip Erdogan’s caustic rhetoric has won him the devotion of Turkey’s conservative Islamic heartlands, from his dismissal of political enemies as “worse than leeches” to his comparisons of Israel’s actions in Gaza to those of Hitl…
Talks on new Yemeni government collapse over Shi’ite Houthi subsidy demands
SANAA (Reuters) – Talks on forming a new Yemeni government collapsed on Sunday over demands by Shi’ite Muslim Houthis to restore fuel subsidies cut by President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, officials said, and further demonstrations in the capital Sanaa wer…
German hostage freed by Islamic State in Syria in June: die Welt am Sonntag paper
BERLIN (Reuters) – A German man held hostage for about a year in Syria by fighters of Islamic State was released in June after the government did a deal with the militant group, die Welt am Sonntag newspaper said on Sunday.
France’s leaders sink in polls amid calls for change of course
PARIS (Reuters) – French Prime Minister Manuel Valls saw his approval rating drop to a new low of 36 percent this month, while Francois Hollande remained the most unpopular president in more than half a century, an Ifop poll showed on Sunday.
Spanish helicopter crash kills three civil guards in mountain rescue
MADRID (Reuters) – Three Spanish civil guards died on Sunday when their helicopter crashed in the northwestern province of Leon as they tried to rescue a mountain climber, a spokesman for the local government said.
Germany has spied on Turkey since 1976: Focus magazine
BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s foreign intelligence agency has been spying on Turkey for nearly four decades, Focus magazine said on Saturday in a report which could raise tensions further between the NATO allies.
China executes eight for ‘terrorist’ attacks in Xinjiang
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China has executed eight people for “terrorist” attacks in its restive far western region of Xinjiang, including three who “masterminded” a dramatic car crash in the capital’s Tiananmen Square in 2013, state media said.
Western Iran hit by quake of magnitude 5.2
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – A shallow earthquake of magnitude 5.2 struck northwest of the western Iranian city of Dezful on Sunday, the U.S. Geological Survey said, some 300 miles (480 km) from Tehran, the capital.