World Briefs

PHILIPPINES-CHINA The Philippines asks an international tribunal to declare China’s vast territorial claims in the South China Sea invalid, saying Beijing’s island-building and other acts have trampled other nations’ maritime rights and irreversibly damaged coral reefs.

PAKISTAN-AFGHANISTAN  One-day peace talks between Afghan officials and Taliban representatives ended with both sides agreeing to meet again after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry says. More on p14

AFGHANISTAN The first-ever female nominee for the supreme court in Afghanistan fails to receiver enough votes of approval from the parliament.

MALAYSIA Authorities raid the office of state investment fund 1MDB as part of an investigation into allegations that hundreds of millions of dollars were funneled from the fund to the personal accounts of Prime Minister Najib Razak.

THAILAND Ten months after two British tourists were killed on a resort island in Thailand, prosecutors call their first witnesses in a case marked by claims that the accused — two migrant workers from Myanmar — were tortured into confessing.

NORTH KOREA In a country with zero kindergartens specifically for the deaf, Robert Grund wants to help establish the first. It’s a small step, but Grund, the Pyongyang representative of the World Federation of the Deaf and the city’s only full-time deaf foreign resident, sees it as part of a larger push to end isolation for the deaf. More on p12

USA The South Carolina Senate gave its final approval Tuesday to removing the Confederate flag from the Capitol grounds, but across the hall in the House, Republicans quietly sought a way to make a last stand to preserve some kind of symbol honoring their Southern ancestors at the Statehouse. The House was scheduled to begin debate yesterday on the bill to take down the flag and its pole and send the banner to the state’s Confederate Relic Room. Republican Gov. Nikki Haley and business leaders support the proposal.

ECUADOR Pope Francis is wrapping up the Ecuador leg of his South American pilgrimage after issuing a call for a new economic and ecological world order where the goods of the Earth are shared by everyone.

RUSSIA vetoed a U.N. resolution yesterday that would have condemned the 1995 massacre of Muslim men at Srebrenica during the Bosnian war as a “crime of genocide,” saying that singling out the Bosnian Serbs for a war crime would create greater division in the Balkans.