Category: World

A 58-year-old former schoolteacher hopes to cap an impressive political resume with his apparent election as Kyrgyzstan’s next president. …

Ukraine’s main security agency has claimed it averted potential violence planned during a protest in front of the country’s parliament, an action organized by controversial firebrand politician Mikheil Saakashvili. …

Electoral officials in Kyrgyzstan say preliminary results show that ruling party candidate Sooronbai Jeenbekov won the presidency by a comfortable margin, avoiding a second-round runoff in a vote his strongest rival contended was “not fair.” …

An overcrowded boat carrying Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar capsized Monday in the Bay of Bengal near a Bangladeshi fishing village, killing 12 people, including six children, police said. Survivors of the capsizing told local officials that up to 65 people were on board and almost half of them were children, local police official Sheikh Ashrafuzzaman …

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Sebastian Kurz, leader of Austria’s conservative People’s Party (OVP), is set to become the world’s youngest leader after declaring his party’s victory in Sunday’s general election. At 31, Kurz is believed to be younger than North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and France’s Emmanuel Macron who is approaching 40. With most of the votes counted, The …

Read more “Austria’s Sebastian Kurz Tipped to Become World’s Youngest Leader”

A new breeding and research center in New Orleans, Louisiana, is now home to African antelopes that usually live in the rain forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The new habitat offers the endangered animals a large space to roam freely and a quiet safe environment in which to breed. Faiza Elmasry has the …

Read more “Herds of Endangered African Animals Find New Home in South Louisiana”

U.S. officials urged Iraqi and Kurdish forces “to avoid additional escalatory actions” following reports of artillery clashes after Iraqi government troops moved in a “major operation” against Kurdish positions near the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. …

Macedonians went to the polls on October 15 to vote in municipal elections. More than 1.7 million people in the Balkan nation were eligible to vote in the first round for mayoral candidates and members of local councils in some 80 municipalities. RFE/RL footage shows voting in the capital, Skopje. (RFE/RL’s Balkan Service) …

Wildfires in the U.S. state of California’s famed wine country are spreading after a week of the worst blazes the state has ever seen. The death toll rose to at least 40 on Saturday, with at least 16 fires burning. One side of the fire zone stretched for 160 square kilometers, destroying some 5,700 homes …

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Iran denies reports that it has closed border crossings with northern Iraq in response to an independence referendum in the autonomous Kurdish region last month. …

The death toll from Saturday’s massive truck bombing in the Somali capital Mogadishu has risen to more than 230, the deputy speaker of Somalia’s upper house of parliament Abshir Mohamed Ahmed tells VOA. More than 200 people were wounded in the blast, including a VOA reporter. Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo said the country “will …

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Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambaev and his wife, Raisa Atambaeva, cast their ballots in Kyrgyzstan’s presidential election on October 15. Among other voters filmed by RFE/RL in Bishkek was parliament speaker Chynybai Tursunbekov. Atambaev is constitutionally barred from running for a second consecutive six-year term. A total of 11 candidates, including one woman, are vying to …

Read more “Kyrgyz President Votes For His Successor”

Gay rights activist Joseph Achille Tiedjou is worried every day that he will be harassed or arrested in Cameroon.   Defending LGBT rights can be dangerous in Africa, where many countries have laws against homosexuality. But in recent years activists have stepped out of the shadows, empowered by the support of the Obama administration and …

Read more “In Africa, LGBT Rights Activists Worry About Trump impact”

Afghan authorities say they have foiled a potentially deadly blast in the capital, Kabul, after seizing a truck loaded with explosives. …

Kenya’s 2017 election followed a predictable script. Until it didn’t. Incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta faced longtime rival Raila Odinga. Kenyatta won the August election by 10 percentage points, or 1.4 million votes. Odinga alleged fraud and petitioned the Supreme Court. Violence spread through the country. Dozens were killed. Kenyatta was poised to begin a second term. …

Read more “Making Sense of Kenya’s Election Surprises: A Timeline of Events”

A familiar kind of weird is returning to Turkmenistan. …

Hundreds of people have gathered to remember a 42-year-old Massachusetts woman who was among the 58 people killed in the mass shooting at a Las Vegas country music festival. The service for Rhonda LeRocque was held Saturday in the auditorium of Tewksbury Memorial High School. WBZ-TV reports that the Tewksbury woman was remembered as a …

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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is promising the company will do a better job weeding out sexual harassment, hateful symbols and violent groups from its short messaging service. The pledge issued in a series of tweets late Friday followed a boycott organized by women supporting actress Rose McGowan after she said Twitter temporarily suspended her account …

Read more “Twitter CEO Vows to Police Sexual Harassment, Hate, Violence”

Russian State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin has said Moscow will not consider itself bound by the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg if Russia is not allowed to participate in the selection of judges. …

At least nine people have been detained in the Russia-occupied Ukrainian region of Crimea for demonstrating in defense of Crimean Tatars. …

The top U.S. military official is urging Kurdish and Iraqi forces gathered on the outskirts of the disputed oil-rich city of Kirkuk to “tone everything down” as Kurdish officials continue to warn of an imminent Iraqi invasion. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Friday that the increasingly tense showdown had Washington’s full attention, warning the …

Read more “US Calls for Calm in Kirkuk as Kurdish Officials Fear Iraq Invasion”

Former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus was interviewed Friday by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team as part of an investigation into potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential campaign, his attorney said. “He was happy to answer all of their questions,” the lawyer, William Burck, said in a …

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UNESCO’s executive board voted Friday to make a former French government minister the U.N. cultural agency’s next chief after an unusually heated election that was overshadowed by Middle East tensions. The board’s selection of Audrey Azoulay over a Qatari candidate came the day after the United States announced that it intends to pull out of …

Read more “France’s Audrey Azoulay Wins Vote to Be Next UNESCO Chief”

A prominent investigative journalist in Kosovo has been attacked and beaten in the capital, Pristina. …