World briefs
PHILIPPINES The government scrapped preliminary peace talks with communist rebel leaders in Europe due to continuing guerrilla attacks, including new violence yesterday that killed a government militiaman and wounded at least four presidential guards in the country’s south, officials said.
KOREA Police in South Korea’s capital yesterday began investigating how a North Korean woman who defected in 2014 and made South Korean TV appearances ended up back in the North.
SAUDI ARABIA announced yesterday that a woman who was detained after wearing a miniskirt in a video that went viral has been released without charge.
YEMEN Medical officials say the death toll from a Saudi-led coalition airstrike on fleeing civilians in the province of Taiz has reached 20. The officials say the names of those killed in Tuesday’s strike appear to indicate they were all members of the same family, al-Bareq.
TURKEY’s prime minister announced a cabinet reshuffle yesterday, replacing or swapping 11 ministers in the 26-member council of ministers, including the ministers for justice and defense.
US-RUSSIA The White House has confirmed that President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin had a second, previously undisclosed conversation at the summit in Hamburg on July 7, this one at an evening dinner following a concert.
ISRAEL Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was caught yesterday by a live microphone railing against the European Union’s “crazy” insistence on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a precondition for closer ties.
POLAND’s lawmakers voted overwhelmingly yesterday to send a contentious draft law reorganizing the work of the nation’s top court for more work by a special parliamentary commission, as European Union leaders expressed concern about rule of law in Poland.
FRANCE Gen. Francois Lecointre, a career military officer, has been nominated France’s military chief, after his predecessor quit yesterday in a dispute with President Emmanuel Macron over budget cuts in a new challenge to Macron’s administration and his economic reforms.
SPAIN’s Civil Guard said yesterday that a former chairman of one of the country’s largest banks has been found dead with a gunshot to the chest in a private hunting estate in southern Spain.
VENEZUELA rejected President Donald Trump’s call to halt a rewriting of the constitution that would consolidate the power of its socialist government, which said that it was reviewing its relations with the United States in response to Trump’s threat of sanctions.
