
Women experts and radical leftists looked set to play a dominant role in Spain's new coalition government as Pedro Sanchez on Friday named a senior global trade expert as his top diplomat.

An 11-year-old boy shot and killed his teacher on Friday at a school in northern Mexico and wounded six other people before killing himself, authorities said. As shocked Mexicans searched for explanations for the school shooting - a rare event for the country - officials said they were investigating a possible link to the Columbine High School massacre in the US in 1999.

By Gwynne Dyer – Over the past few years, China’s diplomatic offensives, military coercion, interference and infiltration have continued unabated, said Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen on New Year’s Day, as the Jan. 11 elections neared. China’s objective is clear: to force Taiwan to compromise our sovereignty. But every leader of her Democratic People’s Party (DPP) has always said that.

Malta's outgoing Prime Minister Joseph Muscat on Friday (Jan 10) said he was “paying the highest political price” for failing to solve a journalist's killing, the investigation into which he has been accused of hampering.

Dozens of Chinese vessels which were fishing in Indonesia’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in Natuna are leaving the area, the Indonesian military said on Thursday, after days of stand-off.

Colombia, a top source of coca, the base ingredient in cocaine, eradicated more than 100,000 hectares of the crop last year, President Ivan Duque said on Thursday. The Andean country has come under repeated pressure from the United States, an important destination for cocaine shipments, to reduce coca cultivation, especially as crop figures shot up in recent years.

A dozen countries working on ways to end Venezuela's crisis on Thursday gave their backing to opposition leader Juan Guaido as a parliamentary speaker, rejecting the claims of a rival.

Mexico granted political asylum on Thursday to four members of Ecuador's opposition holed up in its embassy in Quito since widespread social unrest in October, the foreign ministry said. The four lawmakers, including former Congress speaker Gabriela Rivadeneira, “took a commercial flight to Mexico” early Thursday, the ministry said in a statement.

Lawmakers approved legislation on Thursday which will allow Britain to leave the European Union on Jan 31 with an exit deal, ending more than three years of tumult over the terms of the unprecedented divorce.They voted 330 to 231 in favour of the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill, which implements an exit deal agreed with the EU last year.

Argentina's debt talks will face their first big test this month with a US$ 277-million payment due on a Buenos Aires provincial bond, seen as a gauge of how the indebted nation's new government will handle its creditors.