World briefs
PHILIPPINES The national police chief warned yesterday that law enforcers will be going after more drug lords following a raid that left 15 people dead, including a city mayor who was among politicians President Rodrigo Duterte had publicly linked to illegal drugs.
INDIA Coast guard authorities say they seized a large amount of heroin from a ship off the country’s western coast. The authorities said the 1,500-kilogram haul was the country’s biggest seizure of narcotics in recent years.
AFGHANISTAN The Islamic State group targeted the Iraqi Embassy in Kabul yesterday, with a suicide bomber blowing himself up outside the gates, followed by three gunmen who stormed into the building. The assault set off a four-hour firefight that ended only after Afghan security forces said they had killed all the attackers.
AUSTRALIA A legal battle over secret letters revealing what Queen Elizabeth II knew of her Australian representative’s stunning plan to dismiss Australia’s government in 1975 opened in federal court yesterday, in a case that could finally solve a mystery behind the country’s most dramatic political crisis.
LEBANNON-SYRIA Scores of buses and ambulances arrived at the Lebanon-Syria border yesterday for the second phase of an exchange between Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group and Syria’s al-Qaida affiliate that would lead to the resettlement of thousands of refugees in Syria.
ITALY A man from the Ivory Coast who faced expulsion from Italy for previous aggressive behavior stabbed a public transit bus driver in the Tuscan city of Siena, causing a serious injury.
UGANDA-SOMALIA Twelve Ugandan soldiers were killed and seven others injured in an ambush by al-Shabab Islamic extremists in southern Somalia, Uganda’s military said yesterday.
U.S.-RUSSIA U.S. Vice President Mike Pence yesterday strongly pledged America’s commitment to protecting NATO allies against attacks, including the Baltic states, which have anxiously watched a growing Russian military presence in the region.
VENEZUELA’s socialist government says a national election has given it a popular mandate to dramatically recast the country’s political system even as condemnations of the process have poured in from nations abroad and the opponents at home.
