World Briefs

INDONESIA’s government has rejected a demand by rebels in the country’s restive Papua province to hold negotiations on the territory’s self-determination, following a Dec. 2 attack on a construction site that left at least 17 dead.

PHILIPPINES The Congress yesterday approved a request by the president to extend martial law in the country’s volatile south by a year due to continuing threats by Islamic State group-linked militants and communist insurgents.

KOREA Dozens of North and South Korean soldiers crossed over the world’s most heavily armed border yesterday as they inspected the sites of their rival’s front-line guard posts to verify they’d been removed, part of inter-Korean engagement efforts that come amid stalled U.S.-North Korea nuclear disarmament talks.

PAKISTAN yesterday condemned a U.S. decision to add it to a list of nations that infringe on religious freedom, calling the move “unilateral and politically motivated.”

YEMEN Both sides in Yemen’s civil war have agreed to exchange more than 15,000 prisoners by January 20, a member of the rebel delegation said, in what could be the first major breakthrough in the 4-year-old conflict.

SYRIA Turkey will launch a new military operation against U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in Syria “within a few days,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday, a move likely to further strain ties between NATO allies Turkey and the United States. 

Vatican Pope Francis has removed two cardinals from his informal cabinet after they were implicated in the Catholic Church’s sex abuse and cover-up scandal.

BRITAIN Conservative lawmakers have forced a no-confidence vote in Prime Minister Theresa May, throwing U.K. politics deeper into crisis and Brexit further into doubt. 

SPAIN’s prime minister yesterday compared secession efforts in the northeastern region of Catalonia to Britain’s tangled process of leaving the European Union, saying that both rely on confronting citizens with fake arguments.

BRAZIL A man opened fire in a cathedral in southern Brazil after Mass, killing four people and wounding four more before taking a bullet in the ribs in a firefight with police and then shooting himself in the head, authorities said.

VENEZUELA’s government says it will reactivate an assembly line after U.S.-based Goodyear Tire & Rubber announced it will no longer produce tires in the crisis-wracked country. The socialist government said in a statement that it aims to preserve some 1,160 jobs.