World briefs

CHINA-JAPAN China has urged Japan to ensure the legal rights of two Hong Kong residents who staged a protest this week at a Tokyo shrine honoring Japan’s war dead, the foreign ministry said.

PHILIPPINES A court has found 66 alleged members of the Abu Sayyaf guilty of kidnapping dozens of students, teachers and a Catholic priest in the south in 2000, in the largest single conviction involving the brutal Muslim militant group.

JAPAN More than 40 people were injured in an explosion last night at a restaurant in northern Japan, police said. The cause of the explosion, which occurred in Sapporo, the capital city of Japan’s northern main island of Hokkaido, is still under investigation.

SRI LANKA’s president reappointed Ranil Wickremesinghe (pictured, center) as prime minister yesterday, nearly two months after firing him and setting off a long political stalemate in the South Asian island nation. 

YEMEN The U.N. envoy for Yemen has called for the urgent deployment of U.N. monitors to observe the implementation of a cease-fire in the strategic port city of Hodeida and the withdrawal of rival forces.

ISRAEL The military says it has exposed a fourth Hezbollah attack tunnel dug from Lebanon. It said yesterday that it has placed explosives in the tunnel as part of an open-ended operation to identify and destroy the cross-border passageways.

SWITZERLAND Zurich police say a tour bus on its way to Germany has crashed in Switzerland, killing one person and injuring 44 others.

FRANCE Yellow vest protesters occupied dozens of traffic roundabouts across France yesterday even as their movement for economic justice appeared to be losing momentum on the fifth straight weekend of protests.

BRITAIN Supporters of British Prime Minister Theresa May dampened suggestions yesterday that the government is planning a second referendum on whether to leave the European Union, arguing that another Brexit vote would exacerbate divisions in the U.K., not heal them.

US Cockfighting is an important Guam tradition that must remain legal, the U.S. territory’s governor-elect said in vowing to work to repeal a likely ban imposed by the U.S. government.

NICARAGUA Police have occupied the building of an independent media outlet which has documented abuses by government security forces and paramilitaries since April.

BRAZIL’s outgoing President Michel Temer has signed a decree ordering the extradition of an Italian communist militant convicted of murder in his home country.