INTERNATIONAL

Workers at French nuclear power stations are due to down tools on Thursday amid growing industrial action over controversial labour reforms. The CGT union said staff at 16 of France’s 19 nuclear plants had voted for a one-day strike. The government said on Wednesday it was dipping into strategic oil reserves as strikers blockaded refineries. Unions want the government to ...

  Russia has freed jailed Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko, who became a symbol of resistance against Moscow. “I am free,” Savchenko told a crowd of reporters and politicians as she arrived in Kiev as part of a prisoner swap with two alleged Russian agents. She was sentenced to 22 years in jail for killing two Russian journalists in eastern Ukraine, ...

Demonstrators outside a Donald Trump rally in New Mexico have set fire to campaign merchandise and clashed with police. Protesters threw burning T-shirts and plastic bottles at police outside the rally at a convention centre in Albuquerque. Demonstrators held banners that read “Trump is Fascist” and “We’ve heard enough”, and some waved a Mexican flag. Police responded by firing pepper ...

Eurozone finance ministers have agreed to extend further bailout loans to Greece as well as debt relief, in what they call a “major breakthrough”. After late-night talks in Brussels, the ministers agreed to unlock 10.3bn euros ($11.5bn; £7.8bn) in new loans. The move came two days after the Greek parliament approved another round of spending cuts and tax increases demanded ...

The Afghan Taliban have announced a new leader to replace Mullah Akhtar Mansour who was killed in a US drone strike. In a statement, the Taliban acknowledged Mansour’s death for the first time and named his successor as Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada. Mansour was killed in a strike on his car in Pakistan’s Balochistan province on Saturday. He took over the ...

New satellite imagery appears to reveal extensive damage to a strategically significant airbase in central Syria used by Russian forces after an attack by so-called Islamic State (IS). Four helicopters and 20 lorries were destroyed in a series of fires inside the T4 base last week, the images from intelligence company Stratfor suggest. The cause of the fires is unconfirmed. ...

A sugar shortage has forced Coca-Cola to stop producing soft drinks in Venezuela amid an escalating food and energy shortage. Coke said that suppliers in Venezuela will “temporarily cease operations due to a lack of raw materials”. The announcement comes after the country’s biggest brewer, Empresas Polar, closed plants due to a barley shortage. Venezuela’s economy has contracted sharply as ...

A close ally of Brazilian acting President Michel Temer is stepping aside in a new political scandal. Planning Minister Romero Juca was caught on tape allegedly conspiring to obstruct the country’s biggest-ever corruption investigation. In the tapes, leaked by a newspaper, he appears to talk of stopping the probe at oil giant Petrobras by impeaching suspended President Dilma Rousseff. Mr ...

Alexander Van der Bellen has won Austria’s presidential election, preventing Norbert Hofer from becoming the EU’s first far-right head of state. Mr Hofer led narrowly after Sunday’s election but postal votes gave Mr Van der Bellen victory by 50.3% to 49.7%. Mr Van der Bellen campaigned on a pro-EU platform backed by the Greens Party. Mr Hofer, of the Freedom ...

Libyan coastguards say they intercepted boats carrying 850 migrants trying to reach Europe on Sunday. A spokesman said the migrants from various African countries – including 79 women, 11 of them pregnant – were found in seven inflatable boats near Sabratha, west of the capital Tripoli. More than 30,000 migrants have already crossed from Libya to Italy this year. It ...