World Briefs

CHINA-US As tensions between China and the United States ratchet up, former California Gov. Jerry Brown sees a way to bring together the world’s largest carbon emitter and a U.S. state that’s leading the way in energy standards: climate change. Brown and Xie Zhenhua, China’s top climate official, announced a new university partnership focused on climate research and policy.

INDONESIA Police fired tear gas and water cannons yesterday to disperse thousands of rock-throwing students protesting a new law that they said has crippled Indonesia’s anti-corruption agency. Several thousand university students are enraged that Indonesia’s parliament passed a law last week that reduces the authority of the Corruption Eradication Commission.

INDONESIA The death toll from violent protests in the restive Papua province has risen to 32 after several bodies were found under burned buildings, officials said yesterday. An angry mob torched local government buildings, shops and homes and set fire to cars and motorbikes in Wamena city on Monday in a protest by hundreds of people sparked by rumors that a teacher had insulted an indigenous student.

GULF TENSIONS Britain, France and Germany joined the United States in blaming Iran for attacks on key oil facilities in Saudi Arabia, but the Iranian foreign minister pointed to claims of responsibility by Yemeni rebels and said: “If Iran were behind this attack, nothing would have been left of this refinery.”

UNITED NATIONS Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned global leaders of the looming risk of the world splitting in two, with the United States and China creating rival internets, currency, trade, financial rules “and their own zero sum geopolitical and military strategies.” In his annual “state of the world address” to the General Assembly’s gathering of heads of state and government, Guterres said the risk “may not yet be large, but it is real.”

UNITED NATIONS Facing growing calls for his impeachment, President Donald Trump addressed the U.N. General Assembly yesterday and delivered a roaring defense of nationalism and American sovereignty even as he tried to rally a multinational response to Iran’s escalating aggression.

BRAZILIAN President Jair Bolsonaro is dismissing what he says are media lies about fires in the Amazon and says the rain forest is not being devastated. Bolsonaro told a gathering of world leaders at the United Nations yesterday that many fires occur naturally in the forest during dry weather, though he did also acknowledge some are intentionally set.

UK A decade almost to the day after its creation, the Supreme Court stamped its authority — unanimously and unequivocally — on British politics with a thundering repudiation yesterday of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend Parliament. The court’s president, Baroness Hale of Richmond (pictured) breezily embraced her moment in the constitutional spotlight, speaking in measured tones in a 15-minute speech broadcast live across the nation as she read the landmark ruling from the 11-judge panel.