World Briefs

JAPAN The last group of about 130 crew members got off the Diamond Princess on yesterday, vacating the contaminated cruise ship and ending Japan’s much criticized quarantine that left more than one fifth of the ship’s original population infected with the new virus. Japanese Health Minister Katsunobu Kato told a news conference that the ship is now empty and ready for sterilization and safety checks to prepare for its next voyage.

TURKEY President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country’s borders with Europe were open Saturday, making good on a longstanding threat to let refugees into the continent as thousands of migrants gathered at the frontier with Greece.

TURKEY Russia’s Foreign Ministry is protesting attacks on three journalists of the country’s Sputnik news agency in Turkey and their subsequent detention. Government-owned Sputnik, which operates news websites in about 30 languages, said angry mobs tried to break into the apartments of three staffers in the Turkish capital Ankara on Saturday night, threatening physical violence and demanding they stop their work.

YEMEN’s Houthi rebels wrested control of a strategic city in the country’s north, officials said on yesterday, in a major blow to the internationally recognized government and the Saudi-led coalition that backs it. Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, has been convulsed by civil war since 2014. The Saudi-led coalition intervened against the Houthis the following year.

RUSSIA‘s Foreign Ministry is protesting attacks on three journalists of the country’s Sputnik news agency in Turkey and their subsequent detention. Government-owned Sputnik, which operates news websites in about 30 languages, said angry mobs tried to break into the apartments of three staffers in the Turkish capital Ankara on Saturday night, threatening physical violence and demanding they stop their work.

VENEZUELA Socialist hardliners in Venezuela opened fire during a march headed by Juan Guaidó, injuring a 16-year-old demonstrator and adding to tensions in the country as the opposition leader seeks to revive his campaign to oust Nicolás Maduro.

ECUADOR Officials yesterday confirmed the first case of the new coronavirus in the South American nation, while Mexico reported two more cases and Brazil one more. Ecuador’s Health Minister Catalina Andramuño Zeballos said a more-than-70-year-old Ecuadoran woman who lives in Spain arrived in the country on Feb. 14 showing no symptoms of illness.

SLOVAKIA The center-right populist opposition claimed victory in the parliamentary election in Slovakia, ending the reign of the country’s long dominant but scandal-tainted leftist party that governed on an anti-immigration platform.

SOUTH AFRICA is set to evacuate 151 citizens from the Chinese city of Wuhan as a new virus continues to spread across the globe, authorities said yesterday. The South Africans will be evacuated in a military operation that will see them quarantined for 21 days after they arrive in the country.

VATICAN A coughing Pope Francis told pilgrims gathered for the traditional Sunday blessing that he is canceling his participation at a weeklong spiritual retreat in the Roman countryside because of a cold.