World Briefs

VENEZUELA’s opposition is calling supporters into the streets across the country in a campaign to break the military’s support of President Nicolas Maduro.

CHINA Members of the Uighur Muslim ethnic group are calling on China to post videos of their relatives who have disappeared into a vast system of internment camps. The social media campaign, launched yesterday under the hashtag #MeTooUyghur, follows the release of a state media video showing famed Uighur musician Abdurehim Heyit, who many believed had died in custody. 

MALAYSIAN authorities have seized a record 30 tons of pangolin and pangolin products in eastern Sabah state on Borneo, the biggest such bust in the country.  

INDIA A fire engulfed a shoddily built budget hotel in central New Delhi early yesterday, killing 17 people and injuring at least four others, including a woman from Myanmar who leaped from an upper floor to escape the flames.

AFGHANISTAN’s first president following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the country and the collapse in 1992 of Kabul’s pro-communist government, Sibghatullah Mujadidi, has died. He was 93.

JAPAN Swimming star Rikako Ikee has been diagnosed with leukemia less than 18 months before the Olympics in Tokyo. The 18-year-old Ikee won six gold medals at the Asian Games in Jakarta last year and was tipped to be one of the faces of the 2020 Olympics in her home country.

SPAIN A politically charged trial of a dozen Catalan separatist leaders got underway in Spain’s Supreme Court amid protests and the possibility of an early general election being called in the country.

IRAQ The top Pentagon official arrived in Baghdad yesterday to consult with American military commanders and Iraqi government leaders on the future U.S. troop presence in Iraq.

EGYPT says archaeologists have uncovered an ancient workshop used to build and repair ships that dates back to the Ptolemaic era (332 B.C.-30 B.C.) in the Sinai Peninsula.