World briefs

HONG KONG’s former top leader Donald Tsang was released yesterday after serving time in prison for failing to disclose plans to rent a luxury apartment from a businessman granted a government broadcasting license during Tsang’s time in office. 

CAMBODIA Prime Minister Hun Sen said that if Western countries impose threatened economic sanctions on his country, it would cause the death of the country’s political opposition.

INDIA The skies over the confluence of sacred rivers in northern India where millions of Hindu priests and pilgrims have come to wash away their sins at the ancient Kumbh Mela festival are thick with toxic dust, a sign that government officials are struggling to grapple with the country’s worsening air pollution.

IVORY COAST Judges at the International Criminal Court yesterday acquitted former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo and former youth minister Charles Ble Goude of crimes committed following disputed elections in 2010, saying prosecutors failed to prove their case.

IRAN yesterday conducted one of at least two satellite launches it plans despite criticism from the United States, but the satellite failed to reach orbit.

US-TURKEY President Donald Trump’s warning that if Turkey attacks U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in Syria, the United States will “devastate Turkey economically” has drawn a sharp response from Ankara and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

SPAIN Rescuers in southern Spain are digging a horizontal tunnel in an attempt to reach the bottom of a deep and narrow borehole where they hope to find a 2-year-old toddler, two days after he disappeared.

BRITAIN Lawmakers were preparing to deliver their verdict on Prime Minister Theresa May’s divorce deal with the European Union yesterday after more than two years of political upheaval. All signs point to it receiving a resounding thumbs-down from Parliament.

CUBA President Donald Trump’s Cuba policy is driving hundreds of millions of dollars from the island’s private entrepreneurs to its military-controlled tourism sector, the opposite of its supposed goal, new statistics say. 

BRAZIL The sister of slain Brazilian councilwoman Marielle Franco has expressed concern about the conservative new governor’s commitment to solving the case.

ANTARCTICA is melting more than six times faster than it did in the 1980s, a new study shows.