World briefs

MYANMAR Thirteen policemen were killed and nine injured in early morning attacks on police outposts in Myanmar’s Rakhine state by the insurgent Arakan Army, state media reported.

MALAYSIA’s royal families will meet on Jan. 24 to pick a new king after Sultan Muhammad V abdicated unexpectedly after just two years on the throne, an official said yesterday. More on p13

INDONESIA Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jose Ramos-Horta has urged Indonesia’s government to hold talks with the Papuan independence movement to help end a decades-long insurgency in the country’s easternmost region.

SYRIA U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton is set to press Turkey for assurances that it won’t attack the Kurdish fighters in Syria, which he said is now a condition for the withdrawal of American troops.

EGYPT’s president has inaugurated a new cathedral for the Coptic Orthodox Church and one of the region’s largest mosques in a highly symbolic gesture at a time when Islamic militants are increasingly targeting the country’s minority Christians.

POLAND The five teenage girls who died in a fire at an escape room entertainment site in northern Poland will be buried together in a joint ceremony this week, the city mayor said yesterday.

GERMANY’s IT security agency defended its response to the leaking of hundreds of politicians’ private information, after lawmakers accused it of failing to inform them quickly enough. Politicians from several parties questioned why the Federal Office for Information Security didn’t alert Parliament about the case when it first came to light.

SPAIN’s maritime rescue service says it has saved 549 migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea. The service says its craft intercepted six small smuggling boats carrying a total of 350 migrants in waters east of the Strait of Gibraltar.

BRAZIL The attacks and fire-bombings sweeping Brazil’s northeastern state of Ceara continued unabated despite the deployment of at least 300 members the elite, military-style National Police Force to help bring an end to the violence.

GUATEMALA Authorities in Guatemala were holding a member of a U.N.-sponsored anti-corruption commission in the capital’s airport, refusing him entry to the country in an escalation of tensions between the government and the commission.