INTERNATIONAL

A nurse aged 61 has been shot dead while waiting to vote in an unofficial, opposition-organised referendum in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas. Men on motorbikes fired at a queue, killing her and wounding three others. Venezuela is in crisis, and more than 100 people have died in political clashes since April. More than 7m people cast ballots in Sunday’s vote, according ...

South Korea has proposed holding military talks with the North, after weeks of heightened tension following Pyongyang’s long range missile test. If they were to go ahead, they would be the first high-level talks since 2015. A senior official said talks should aim to stop “all hostile activities that raise military tension” at the fortified border between the Koreas. South ...

Events will be held in Turkey later to mark the first anniversary of a failed coup in which at least 260 people died and 2,196 were wounded. A faction of the army tried to seize power from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan but the attempt collapsed. Since the coup, the government has dismissed more than 150,000 employees from state institutions in ...

Two Ukrainian tourists have been killed in mass stabbings at a hotel in the Red Sea resort of Hurghada, Egyptian medical officials say. At least four other people were injured and a man has been arrested. The suspect is being questioned by police to determine his motives, the interior ministry said. The attacker appears to have swum from a nearby ...

Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been convicted of corruption charges and sentenced to nine and a half years in prison. The judge ruled he could remain free pending an appeal. Lula has rejected claims that he received an apartment as a bribe in a corruption scandal linked to state oil company Petrobras. He says the trial ...

Former top football official Chuck Blazer has died at the age of 72, his lawyers say. Blazer, whose evidence to US investigators helped trigger the Fifa corruption scandal, had been suffering from cancer. He was a larger-than-life character, and formerly the general secretary of Concacaf, the governing body of North and Central American football. In 2013 he pleaded guilty to ...

President Donald Trump says the mood in the White House is “fantastic” despite intense scrutiny of his campaign’s alleged dealings with Russia. He told Reuters the administration was “functioning beautifully”. The president also defended his son, who it has emerged met a Russian lawyer during the election campaign. US media have described the White House as in chaos over the ...

Donald Trump has defended his son over a meeting with a Russian lawyer during his presidential campaign, calling him “open, transparent and innocent”. He tweeted hours after Donald Trump Jr spoke to Fox News about the meeting he was told would offer Kremlin-linked information about Hillary Clinton. Critics accuse Mr Trump Jr of intent to collude with the Russians, and ...

No one likes a dull wedding, but one father-of-the-bride’s speech was a little too electrifying at his daughter’s ceremony last weekend. JP Nadeau was reportedly struck by lightning mid-sentence in his apple orchard in New Brunswick, Canada. “And just as I told my new son-in-law ‘You’re a lucky guy’ – Boom!” he told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Aside from a ...

Turkey will find it “comforting” if the EU says it cannot be accepted as a member, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has told the BBC. Speaking to HARDtalk’s Zeinab Badawi, he said Turkey was “able to stand on its own two feet”. He also denied that the country has jailed 150 journalists, saying only two people with press cards were in ...