Roadside bomb kills seven members of Algeria’s security forces
ALGIERS (Reuters) – A roadside bomb killed seven members of Algeria’s security forces as they were patrolling in the west of the country, the second major attack on the military in three months.
South African metalworkers’ union rejects pay offer, threatens wider strike
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South Africa’s metalworkers’ union NUMSA rejected the latest pay offer from engineering and steel sector employers on Sunday, saying black workers were still underpaid, and threatened to widen its two-week old strike.
Georgia’s ruling party sweeps to victory in local election runoffs
TBILISI (Reuters) – Georgia’s ruling Georgian Dream coalition has won a string of local election runoffs, cementing its control of local councils which had been the last powerbase of former president Mikheil Saakashvili’s party.
In Nigeria, Boko Haram-style violence radiates southwards
ABUJA (Reuters) – As long as violence perpetrated by Islamist militants was more or less contained in Nigeria’s remote northeast, the attitude of many citizens and expatriates in the more prosperous south was a shrug of the shoulders.
Berlin, Washington, Moscow and Markus R., the spy who walked in from the cold
BERLIN/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – For this year’s Independence Day bash the U.S. embassy in Germany picked the historic Tempelhof airport where an allied air lift 66 years ago kept Berlin’s citizens from starving during Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s blockad…
Heavy fighting breaks out near Libya’s Tripoli airport, seven dead
TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Heavy fighting broke out between rival militias vying for control of Libya’s main airport on Sunday, killing at least seven people and forcing a halt of all flights in the worst fighting in the capital for six months.
An embrace and a handshake: how John Kerry brokered peace between Afghan rivals
KABUL (Reuters) – It was late on Saturday evening in a fourth-floor room of the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Kabul that the election crisis in Afghanistan that had threatened to divide the nation was staved off.
Renzi struggling to rein in Italy’s big-spending state
ROME (Reuters) – Carlo Cottarelli left a high-level job at the International Monetary Fund last year to help the Italian government cut high public spending. Nine months on, the craggy 59-year-old economist and newly minted “spending commissioner” has …
Iraqi factions hit new delay in forming government
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s parliament failed on Sunday to break a political deadlock that is holding up the formation of a new government to tackle an Islamist-led insurgency raging less than 50 miles (80 km) from Baghdad.
Clashes in northern Mali kill at least 30 ahead of peace talks
BAMAKO (Reuters) – More than 30 people were killed in desert clashes in northern Mali, the army and Tuareg rebels said, just days before the start of internationally-brokered peace talks.
