WORLD

New Delhi, India | AFP | A team of six naval officers are starting a historic and gruelling around-the-world mission on Sunday — the first circumnavigation of the globe by an Indian all-female crew. Lieutenant Commander Vartika Joshi, who is leading the voyage which will begin in the western state of …

Besançon, France | AFP | Tourists visiting a church in the picturesque French town of Chateau-Chalon were surprised to discover that local pranksters had replaced the fonts’ holy water with alcohol, the local tourism office said Friday. A dozen tourists sniffed out the telltale signs of eau-de-vie, a clear fruit brandy, …

Caracas, Venezuela | AFP | Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced Friday his government will sell oil and other commodities in currencies other than the dollar, in a bid to weather US-imposed sanctions on the embattled country. “I have decided to start selling oil, gas, gold and all other products that Venezuela …

Washington, United States | AFP |  Donald Trump’s long-time bodyguard and confidant Keith Schiller is to leave the White House, he said Friday, ending a decades-long run working at businessman-turned-president’s side. Schiller — who is officially the Director of Oval Office Operations — told AFP that he plans to return …

Berlin, Germany | AFP | German Chancellor Angela Merkel Friday urged football governing bodies UEFA and FIFA to tighten rules governing transfers and stamp out spiralling record spending on players. “I view the financial developments in professional football as critically as many people,” she told Mittelbayerische Zeitung daily. “Such sums are …

Bamako, Mali | AFP | Malian and Burkinabe soldiers have killed, tortured and disappeared civilians while trying to root out jihadists in central Mali, Human Rights Watch said Friday. “Mali and Burkina Faso military operations to counter the growing presence of Islamist armed groups in central Mali have resulted in …

Berlin, Germany | AFP | Germany dismissed on Friday Poland’s threat to demand new talks over World War II reparations from Berlin, saying the issue had already been settled in 1953. “Poland made a binding decision in August 1953… to relinquish demands for further war reparations,” government spokesman Steffen Seibert said, …

Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh | AFP | Some 270,000 refugees have fled Myanmar’s violence-wracked Rakhine state and entered Bangladesh in the last fortnight, most from the Muslim Rohingya minority, the United Nations said Friday. “An estimated 270,000 refugees arrived in Bangladesh in the last two weeks,” said Vivian Tan, a spokeswoman for …

Islamabad, Pakistan | AFP | Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Friday inaugurated the country’s fifth nuclear power plant, developed in collaboration with China amid hopes that his government could end chronic power shortages this year. Pakistan is one of the few developing countries pursuing atomic energy in the wake …

Warsaw, Poland | AFP | Poland’s rightwing premier Thursday said she believed her country had the right to demand World War II reparations from Germany but added that her government was still mulling its official position. “The position of the Polish government on war reparations will be officially expressed when a …