AFP, MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin in an interview aired Sunday called US President-elect Donald Trump intelligent and predicted he would quickly grasp his new level of responsibility and act accordingly. “Since he managed to achieve success in business, that shows he is a clever person,”…

AFP, ALEPPO, Syria: For much of the past four years, taking a bus between the two sides of Syria’s divided second city Aleppo meant an arduous,…

AFP, OAKLAND: Fire crews in California on Sunday were searching the charred remains of a warehouse gutted by a blaze during a rave party, with officials saying the death toll could reach 40. Relatives of dozens of people missing in the Friday night blaze in Oakland near San Francisco endured an anxious…

AFP, RAMALLAH: Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah party is to announce results of a vote for its ruling bodies Sunday, an election watched closely for clues of how the 81-year-old sees his succession. The election for both the party’s central committee and its parliament, known as…

AFP, HELSINKI: The mayor of a Finnish town near the border with Russia and two local journalists were shot dead as they left a restaurant on Saturday night, police said. Investigators said the three women were killed by a man with a shotgun who was later arrested and was interrogated on Sunday. The…

AFP, KAMPALA: The bodies of 51 unidentified victims of fierce fighting in a local kingdom in Uganda’s restive Kasese region were buried in a mass ceremony on Sunday, officials said. They were among nearly 90 people killed in fighting last month between palace guards of a tribal monarch and security…