Boris Johnson: UK should not pay 'large sums' for EU trade access and other top stories.

• Boris Johnson: UK should not pay 'large sums' for EU trade access

  Media captionBoris Johnson: ''We will be able to take back control of the money that we currently give to Brussels" The UK should not have to pay "large" sums to the EU to trade with it after Brexit, Boris Johnson has said.The idea of the UK paying for tariff-free access to the EU's internal market has been mooted in recent days.The foreign secretary told the BBC's Andrew Marr that the question of whether the UK would pay anything at all was "pure speculation", but if it did, any payments h..

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• Afghan President: Taliban Won't Last Without Pakistan Support

  

  NEW DELHI, INDIA —  Afghan President Ashraf Ghani told an international conference held in the northern Indian city of Amritsar that the Taliban insurgency in his country would not survive without support from Pakistan and called for the setting up of a fund to combat extremism. Referring to an upsurge of violence in his country by militant groups, the Afghan leader said, "Some still provide sanctuary in support or tolerate these networks. As Mr. (Mullah Rahmatullah) Kakazada, one of the key f..

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• Local politician, 2 reporters killed in Finland shooting

  

  HELSINKI –  A gunman killed a local town councilor and two journalists in an apparent random shooting in a nightlife district in a small town in southeastern Finland, police said Sunday. A man has been detained on suspicion of murder. The chairwoman of Imatra Town Council and two female reporters were gunned down in a pedestrian area outside a restaurant in the town just before a police patrol car arrived to the scene around midnight Saturday, police spokeswoman Heli Jamsen-Turkki said. Police ..

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• Putin just called Trump 'smart,' but it's not entirely a compliment

  

  Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Pool photo by Dmitri Lovetsky via Reuters) MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered something of a backhanded compliment to Donald Trump on Sunday, saying the U.S. president-elect is smart enough to understand that he’s going to shoulder a whole new level of responsibilities come January. “To the extent that he was able to achieve success in business, this shows that he’s a smart person,” Putin said in snippets of an interview with broadcaster..

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• Europe|Matteo Renzi's Fate Is at Stake as Italians Vote in Referendum

  

  But it is the vote in Italy, the fourth-largest economy in Europe and a key player in the European Union, that is sending shivers through leaders on the Continent and across the globe. After Brexit and the victory of Donald J. Trump in the United States, Italy has emerged as potentially the next domino to fall to surging populist forces, raising fears of political instability that could prompt a renewed financial crisis.Mr. Renzi, 41, came to power in 2014 as an anti-establishment outsider who ..

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• Fidel Castro, Former Cuban Dictator, Laid to Rest

  

  HAVANA, Cuba—Fidel Castro, the idealistic revolutionary turned communist dictator who ruled Cuba for nearly half a century, was buried Sunday in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba, where he and a band of rebels touched off a revolution that reverberated across the world. It was the closing spectacle for a firebrand beloved or loathed by millions for installing a socialist state 90 miles off Florida, fomenting revolution in Latin...

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• Mike Pence: Trump's Taiwan Call Was Just 'Courtesy'

  

  Vice-President elect Mike Pence dismissed Donald Trump's phone call with the president of Taiwan as a "courtesy," telling NBC's Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press" that nothing more should be read into a conversation that broke with decades of United States policy. Pence would not say whether the incoming administration plans to further break with established United States-China policy, which does not formally recognize Taiwan. "She reached out to the President-elect and he took the call from t..

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• Rebels tell US they won't leave Aleppo; army sees operation over in week...

  

  BEIRUT Rebels in Aleppo have told the United States they will not leave their besieged enclave in the city after Moscow called for talks with Washington over their withdrawal, signaling they will fight on even as their top commander was wounded.A Syrian military source said the army aimed to take full control of Aleppo within weeks, after seizing swathes of the city's rebel-held east in an advance poised to deal a major blow to the rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad.With more than 30,..

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