World Briefs

JAPAN-RUSSIA Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sat down for talks yesterday with Russian President Vladimir Putin focusing on a decades-long territorial dispute between the two nations.

VIETNAM won’t devalue the dong to boost exports even as the U.S.-China tension starts to hurt Southeast Asia’s trade-reliant economies.

THAILAND DNA tests show that two bodies found washed up on the shore of the Mekong River in Thailand’s northeast are the corpses of anti-government activists, police said yesterday, in what are feared to be political killings.

AUSTRALIA’s prime minister said yesterday he would be disappointed if radical cleric Abu Bakar Bashir were released from prison early and urged Indonesia to show respect for the victims of the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that the firebrand preacher inspired. 

AFGHANISTAN Officials confirmed yesterday that dozens of victims killed the previous day in a brazen Taliban attack on a military base not far from Kabul were members of the country’s intelligence agency — a severe blow to the government which has already lost control of nearly half of Afghanistan to insurgents. 

INDIA Police in northeastern India say they have arrested 61 Rohingya Muslims this week amid reports that more than 1,300 have recently crossed the border into Bangladesh.

RUSSIA Authorities said yesterday that a passenger plane bound for Moscow has been forced to land shortly after take-off in a suspected hijacking.

ROMANIA’s president says a government decree that could invalidate hundreds of corruption cases involving senior officials is “crassly unconstitutional.”

FRANCE’s national weather agency Meteo France says a large part of the country is on alert for dangerous levels of snow and ice and urged people to limit their movement.

PORTUGAL Police say they have discovered 430 kilograms of cocaine concealed inside a banana shipment from Latin America. The highly pure cocaine that was on its way to a gang in Spain had a street value of around 15 million euros (MOP137 million).

BRAZIL The son of new President Jair Bolsonaro is fending off suspicions of financial irregularities that are starting to cast a shadow over the administration just four weeks in power.

COLOMBIA The head negotiator for Colombia’s National Liberation Army is denying advance knowledge of an attack on a police academy last week and demanding that Colombia’s government allow negotiators to return safely from Cuba.