World briefs

CLIMATE Global temperatures are soaring toward a record high this year, the U.N. weather agency said, while another report showed emissions of a key global warming gas have flattened out in the past three years. The reports injected a mix of gloom and hope at U.N. climate talks in Marrakech this week. “Another year. Another record,” said Petteri Taalas, the head of the World Meteorological Organization.

CHINA-US Chinese President Xi Jinping reaffirms the importance of relations with the United States in a phone conversation with President-elect Donald Trump, opening communication with a politician who had been strongly critical of China during his campaign. More on p11

USA Trump’s unforeseen victory has triggered pangs of uncertainty at home and grave concerns around the world. Though Obama has urged unity and said the U.S. must root for Trump’s success, the president’s trip to Greece, Germany and Peru forces him to confront global concerns about the future of America’s leadership. Obama departs today on the six-day trip. More on p14

MYANMAR 34 people were killed after they attacked government troops in western Rakhine state over the weekend, but residents of the villages belonging to the Muslim Rohingya minority say the victims they saw were unarmed civilians.

INDIA The crisis sparked by the shortage of cash in India following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s anti-graft measure to ban high-value currency bills has hit the movement of goods in Asia’s third-largest economy. More than half of an estimated 9.3 million trucks under the All India Motor Transport Congress have been affected as drivers abandoned vehicles mid-way into their trip after running out of cash.

GERMANY A Syrian man’s business was daubed with a Nazi swastika and set on fire in the eastern city of Magdeburg. Police said in a statement that a witness reported seeing three men smash the glass front of a tanning studio, followed by an explosion and a fire. Officers found a freshly painted swastika and the word “Out” painted on a wall.

AUSTRIA interior ministry says that of the 287 Islamic radicals identified in the country in the past few years, 40 percent arrived as migrants looking for asylum. The ministry says its data covers a period from early 2011 and ending July 1 of this year. It released the data yesterday in answer to a parliamentary query from the right-wing and anti-migrant Freedom Party.

THE RUSSIAN military says one of its fighter jets based on an aircraft carrier currently near Syria’s shores has crashed on a training mission, but its pilot survived. The Defense Ministry said yesterday that the crash of the MiG-29 fighter will not affect the operations of the Admiral Kuznetsov carrier.