Reuters World News Summary

Following is a summary of current world news briefs. Ethiopian Airlines flight to Nairobi crashes, killing 157

An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 passenger jet to Nairobi crashed early on Sunday with 149 passengers and eight crew members aboard, the airline said, and there were no survivors, according to the state broadcaster. The flight left Bole airport in Addis Ababa at 8.38 am local time, before losing contact with the control tower just a few minutes later at 8.44 am. Fourteen killed in Colombia plane crash: civil aviation agency

Fourteen people were killed in a plane crash in the Colombian plains province of Meta on Saturday, the country's civil aviation agency said. The Special Administrative Unit of Civil Aeronautics said there were no survivors of the crash, which occurred after the DC-3 aircraft made a distress call at 10:40 a.m. local time (1540 GMT). Rakhine rebels kill nine in fresh strike on Myanmar police

Arakan Army insurgents killed nine Myanmar police in the latest attack in the country's western Rakhine State, the government said on Sunday, as clashes threaten to engulf a large part of the troubled region. Villagers heard gunfire as fighters from the armed group, which recruits from the mainly Buddhist Rakhine ethnic group, raided a police post in the village of Yoe Ta Yoke late on Saturday night. India to go to polls from April 11; tension with Pakistan seen boosting Modi

India will hold a general election in seven stages starting on April 11, the election commission said on Sunday, in what will be the world's biggest democratic exercise with Prime Minister Narendra Modi likely to benefit from tension with Pakistan. Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora told reporters that about 900 million voters would be eligible for the polls, about 15 million between the ages of 18 and 19 years. In Muslim Malaysia, uproar over LGBT groups at Women's Day march

A Malaysian minister has decried the presence of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) groups at a march celebrating International Women's Day on Saturday, calling it "a misuse of democratic space". The statement comes amid concerns over growing persecution of the LGBT community in the Muslim-majority country, where sodomy and other same-sex acts are outlawed. With shrouded faces, Islamic State fighters stand guard over final enclave

Armed with assault rifles and with faces wrapped in scarves, the Islamic State fighters visible at the boundary of their last enclave in eastern Syria are among the hardened jihadists who appear ready to fight to the death. Thousands of people - many of them the wives of Islamic State fighters and their children - have been streaming out of the besieged enclave at Baghouz for weeks, forcing the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to delay an assault on the last vestige of the jihadists' territorial rule. Without change, UK PM May's Brexit deal faces heavy defeat, warn eurosceptics

British Prime Minster Theresa May faces a heavy defeat in parliament on Tuesday if she asks lawmakers to vote again on her Brexit deal without having secured any changes to it, the heads of two key eurosceptic groupings in parliament said on Sunday. May's government is scrambling - so far unsuccessfully - to secure last-minute changes to an exit agreement with the European Union before a vote on Tuesday on whether to approve the deal. Egypt's Sisi nominates Major General Kamel al-Wazir as transport minister

Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Sunday he had nominated Major General Kamel al-Wazir as transport minister to replace Hisham Arafat, who resigned after a train crash that killed at least 22 and injured dozens. Wazir was head of the Armed Forces Engineering Authority, one of the main owners of the new administrative capital outside Cairo and a builder of large infrastructure and national projects. President Bouteflika to return to Algeria on Sunday: source, TV

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is expected to return to Algeria on Sunday after two weeks in a Swiss hospital as he faces mass protests that pose the biggest threat to his 20-year rule. A source familiar with the matter told Reuters Bouteflika would return on Sunday and Ennahar TV said he was expected to land around noon (1100 GMT). Despite pressure, Venezuela's Maduro seems set on staying put: U.S. envoy

There are no signs that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is open to negotiations to end the political impasse with opposition leader Juan Guaido, Washington's envoy for Venezuela said. Elliott Abrams, who served in the administrations of both Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, said any negotiated solution would need to be reached among Venezuelans, and that the United States could help by lifting or easing U.S. sanctions and travel restrictions once Maduro agreed to go.

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