Headlines

 Newcastle, Dec.5.─ She’s thousands of kilometres away from her homeland, but Muzoon Almellehan is still fighting for Syria.

The rainy grey streets of this English port city could hardly feel further from the olive grove-covered hills of her home province of Daraa, but the 17-year-old Ms. Almellehan sees everything she does here – from her high-school studies to her relentless campaigning to ensure other refugee children get access to education – as a front in the war for her homeland’s future.

53.3% of Austrian voters chose Alexander Van der Bellen  

Vienna, Dec.5.─ Austria's voters have resoundingly rejected anti-immigration and eurosceptic Norbert Hofer's bid to become the European Union's first far-right president, a result greeted with relief from centrist politicians across the continent.

Instead, Greens-backed independent candidate Alexander Van der Bellen swept 53.3 % of Sunday's vote against 46.7 % for his rival from the anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPOe), according to public television projections.

The president has a duty to spare her country months of drift

 Seoul, Dec.3.─ Many members of the party of South Korea’s president, Park Geun-hye, want it. So does the opposition, which controls South Korea’s parliament. So do most ordinary Koreans: they have been marching for it by the millions. Even Ms Park says she is ready to do it. So why has she not yet resigned?

Ms Park is hopelessly mired in an ever-deepening influence-peddling scandal (see article). She admits that she shared too much information about affairs of state with a close confidante, Choi Soon-sil, including advance drafts of many of her speeches. Ms Choi, prosecutors say, went on to use her clout with the president to extort money and favours from big companies and other organisations. Ms Park, the prosecutors allege, was an active participant in this racket, ordering her aides to help Ms Choi extract her payouts.

Havana, Nov.26.─ Cuba's historic revolutionary leader Fidel Castro died Friday aged 90, after defying the United States during a half-century of iron-fisted rule and surviving the eclipse of global communism.

One of the world's longest-serving rulers and modern history's most singular characters, Castro defied 11 U.S. administrations and hundreds of assassination attempts.

His younger brother, President Raul Castro, announced the news shortly after midnight (0500 GMT Saturday) but gave no details of the cause of death.

Fidel Castro crushed opposition at home from the moment he took power in 1959 to lead the communist Caribbean island through the Cold War. He stepped aside only in 2006 after intestinal surgery.