World

Cameroon on Sunday held its first indirect regional elections that the long-serving president called partly to defuse the separatist insurgency in the English-speaking west but which the opposition is boycotting as a sham. In Sunday’s election, a 24,000-strong electoral college made up of municipal councillors and traditional chiefs will vote to fill the posts of 900 regional councillors: 90 for each of the country’s 10 regions. But the municipal councils that have the greatest proportion of votes is already dominated by 87-year-old President Paul Biya’s party. The two main opposition parties, Maurice Kamto’s Movement for the Rebirth of Cameroon (MRC)…

FILE PHOTO: The European Union’s Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier looks on as he addresses the European Economic and Social Committee, at the EU Parliament in Brussels, Belgium October 30, 2019. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File PhotoBritish and EU negotiators embark on probably their final two-day scramble to secure a post-Brexit trade deal Sunday, after failing to reach agreement for eight months.  Michel Barnier and his UK counterpart David Frost will resume talks in Brussels where they broke off on Friday, calling a pause after a fruitless week of late-night wrangling in London. “We will see if there is a way forward,” Barnier tweeted.…

People attend a demonstration against the “Global Security Bill”, that right groups say would make it a crime to circulate an image of a police officer’s face and would infringe journalists’ freedom in the country, in Paris, France, December 5, 2020. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes Violence erupted in Paris on Saturday for the second consecutive weekend at a mass protest against a new security law, with demonstrators clashing with police, vehicles set alight and shop windows smashed. The weekly nationwide protests are becoming a major headache for President Emmanuel Macron’s government, with tensions intensified by the beating of a black music producer…

A suspect in a 1982 attack on a Jewish neighbourhood in Paris that killed six people was on Saturday charged and remanded in custody by French authorities after his extradition from Norway, judicial sources said. Walid Abdulrahman Abu Zayed was charged with murder and attempted murder by a Paris magistrate specialising in terror crimes, said a judicial source, who asked not to be named. He had appeared before the magistrate after arriving late Friday at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport from Oslo, where he had been living since 1991. Abu Zayed was arrested in September in the town of Skien…

President Donald Trump has ordered the removal of most US military and security personnel from Somalia, where they have been conducting operations against the Al-Shabaab militant group, the Pentagon said Friday. After ordering major troop reductions in Iraq and Afghanistan recently, Trump’s new move reflects his drive to disengage US forces from what he calls endless wars abroad, making good on a campaign pledge in the final weeks of his presidency. Trump “has ordered the Department of Defense and the United States Africa Command to reposition the majority of personnel and assets out of Somalia by early 2021,” the Pentagon…

Iran’s supreme court said Saturday it will review the cases of three young men sentenced to death over links to deadly November 2019 protests after a request from their lawyers. Numerous calls had spread online after the verdict was announced, calling for a halt for executions in Iran, with the United Nations and European countries reaffirming their opposition to the death sentence. In July, Iran’s judiciary halted the death sentences against the three a week after they were upheld by a tribunal over evidence the judiciary said was found on their phones of them setting alight banks, buses and public…

TikTok continued serving up short videos in the US despite missing a Trump administration deadline to come up with an acceptable deal to put its American assets into US hands. Talks between TikTok parent ByteDance and government negotiators were continuing despite the missed deadline set by the Committee on Foreign Investment to carry out an executive order by President Donald Trump, according to a source familiar with the matter. “The committee is engaging with ByteDance to complete the divestment and other steps necessary to resolve the national security risks arising from the transaction, consistent with the president’s August 14 order,” said a spokesperson for…

A journalist watches a live stream interview of French President Emmanuel Macron to the digital news platform Brut on December 4, 2020 in Paris. (Photo by BERTRAND GUAY / AFP)French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday said he was keeping his options open for the 2022 presidential elections, saying nothing was excluded including not standing at all. “If I put myself in the position of being a candidate, I would no longer take the right decisions”, Macron told the Brut online news site in a televised interview. “It will come, if it has to come, at the right time,” he said.…

WASHINGTON, DC – DECEMBER 01: Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) holds up a sign that reads “Pelosi Priority: Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment Act” as he talks to reporters following the weekly Republican Senate conference meeting in the Mansfield Room at the U.S. Capitol on December 1, 2020 in Washington, DC. The Senate GOP leaders were asked about the chances of Congress passing another coronavirus relief bill along with must-pass government funding legislation. Bill O’Leary-Pool/Getty Images/AFPUS House legislators voted for the first time Friday to decriminalize cannabis, a major step towards bringing federal laws in line with states and other countries that have…