World briefs

CHINA has started an overhaul of its salt industry, easing a monopoly that has existed in some form for more than 2,000 years and predates the Great Wall. 

SOUTH KOREA President Park Geun-hye refused to testify in the impeachment trial that will decide her future, prompting prosecutors to question why she has publicly denied the charges of corruption but will not do so before the court.

PHILIPPINES The Food and Drug Administration ordered pharmaceutical giant Sanofi Pasteur Inc. to stop airing television and radio advertisements for its dengue vaccine in violation of a ban on promoting prescription or ethical drugs in mass media. 

ISRAEL’s prime minister is denying wrongdoing a day after he was questioned by police for more than three hours over corruption allegations. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote on Twitter yesterday that “there won’t be anything because there is nothing,” and decried “years of daily persecution against me and my family.”

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump tweeted a vow that North Korea won’t develop a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the United States.

YEMENI security officials say pro-government forces attacked al-Qaida militants in the country’s south, killing 15 jihadis but losing 11 of their own troops. The officials say the fighting began when security forces, backed by the Saudi-led coalition that is fighting Yemen’s Shiite rebels elsewhere in the country, yesterday attacked an al-Qaida stronghold in the Marakasha mountains in Abyan province, east of the southern city of Aden.

TURKEY’s lira weakened the most among major world currencies yesterday, falling as much as 1.6 percent to a new record, as the killer of 39 people at an Istanbul nightclub remained at large and inflation accelerated more than estimates in December.

UK Underscoring the hectic preparations for Britain’s divorce proceedings from the European Union, London’s envoy to the EU has unexpectedly resigned only months before the negotiations are due to start and on the heels of a nasty controversy.

SOUTH AFRICA The government said a visit to Taiwan by the mayor of a municipality that includes the capital, Pretoria, breached foreign policy and was “highly regrettable.” Tshwane Mayor Solly Msimanga, from the main opposition Democratic Alliance party, ignored advice from the Department of International Relations and Cooperation when he traveled to Taipei, contravening South Africa’s “One China” policy, the department said in a statement yesterday.