World Briefs

CHINA-JAPAN Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged he will further expand his country’s already improving ties with China but said Japan still needs to bolster its defense capability amid concern about Chinese military activity. 

INDONESIA Separatists opened fire on an aircraft carrying military personnel and local government officials in Indonesia’s easternmost Papua region, killing one soldier.

PHILIPPINES President Rodrigo Duterte and his top security officials yesterday visited a Catholic cathedral in the southern Philippines where suspected Islamic militants set off bombs that killed at least 20 people and wounded more than 100.

PAKISTAN The lawyer of a Pakistani Christian woman awaiting the final ruling on her fate vowed he would fight the last legal hurdle for his client who had faced death threats from Islamist radicals following her acquittal in a blasphemy case.

RUSSIA Police yesterday found the painting that was stolen a day earlier from Moscow’s famed museum of Russian art in broad daylight before unsuspecting visitors.

AFGHANISTAN  The president yesterday assured his people that their rights will not be compromised in the name of peace with the Taliban, days after the U.S. envoy tasked with resolving America’s longest war reported significant progress in talks with the insurgents. 

FRANCE Some 10,000 people wearing red scarves marched through Paris to protest acts of violence and vandalism on the sidelines of anti-government demonstrations by the yellow vest movement.

BRITAIN Pro-Brexit British lawmakers were mounting a campaign yesterday to rescue Prime Minister Theresa May’s rejected European Union divorce deal in a parliamentary showdown this week.

BRAZIL Firefighters yesterday carefully moved over treacherous mud, sometimes walking, sometimes crawling, in search of survivors or bodies, four days after a dam collapse that buried mine buildings and surrounding neighborhoods with iron ore waste.

CUBA A tornado and pounding rains smashed into the eastern part of Cuba’s capital overnight, toppling trees, bending power poles and flinging shards of metal roofing through the air as the storm cut a path of destruction across eastern Havana.