US President Donald Trump (C) holds a bouquet of flowers upon being welcomed by Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud (R) during the former’s arrival at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh on May 20. ─ AFP United States President Donald Trump has landed in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on his first trip abroad since taking office. He is reportedly also ...

INDONESIA: Jakarta’s Christian governor was sentenced to two years in jail for blasphemy, a harsher-than-expected ruling that critics fear will embolden hardline Islamist forces to challenge secularism in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation. Tuesday’s guilty verdict comes amid concern about the growing influence of Islamist groups, who organized mass rallies during a tumultuous election campaign that ended with Basuki ...

KIEL: Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives secured a strong win on Sunday in state polls in northern Germany, early results showed, lending a boost to her bid to retain power in September’s national elections. Voters in the small, northern state of Schleswig-Holstein on the Baltic Sea handed her CDU party 34 per cent, while the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) clinched ...

PARIS: Centrist independent is projected to win by 65.1% to 34.9% but defeat still marks historically high vote for France’s far right. The pro-EU centrist Emmanuel Macron has won the French presidency with a decisive victory over the far-right Marine Le Pen that his supporters hailed as holding back the tide of populism. Macron, 39, a former economy minister who ...

PARIS: Leading French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s campaign said on Friday it had been the target of a “massive” computer hack that dumped its campaign emails online barely 24 hours before voters choose between the centrist and his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen. Macron, who is seen as the frontrunner in an election billed as the most important in France ...

PARIS: The two contenders for the French presidency traded insults in a fiery head to head TV debate, in a key moment of a long and bitter campaign. Centrist Emmanuel Macron said his far-right rival Marine Le Pen’s strategy “is to lie”, while she called him a shameless “darling of the system”. Mr Macron is well ahead in the polls, ...

KABUL: Violence against journalists is in highest record in 2016 and the first quarters of 2017 with 128 cases from which 14 are murder, according to reports. The chief executive expressed concerns over the increasing violence against journalists, but said Tuesday that the national unity government is committed to the principles of the freedom of speech. Journalists from different provinces ...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has expressed concerns about the latest measures taken by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, saying they have adversely affected relations between the European Union and Ankara. “The developments over the past weeks have severely hit German-Turkish ties as well as European-Turkish relations,” Merkel told the parliament in Berlin on Thursday. She further accused Turkey of holding journalists without ...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel addresses the lower house of parliament Bundestag in Berlin.—Reuters Britain must answer questions about its plans to exit the European Union before negotiations on the split can begin, and the country cannot be under any illusions that it will retain the same rights and privileges as a member of the bloc, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said ...

PARIS: French President Francois Hollande on Monday urged voters to reject far-right leader Marine Le Pen in next month’s presidential run-off against pro-EU candidate Emmanuel Macron. Macron is the clear favourite to become France’s youngest-ever president after topping Sunday’s first round of voting with 24.01 per cent of votes, ahead of National Front (FN) leader Le Pen on 21.30 per ...