World briefs
SPAIN A white van jumped the sidewalk yesterday in Barcelona’s historic Las Ramblas district, crashing into a summer crowd of residents and tourists, killing at least 13 people according to media reports. According to Spain’s El Pais newspaper, police are treating the van incident as a terror attack.
CHINA-INDIA China’s main state news agency, Xinhua, has released a video online criticizing India in a border dispute that prompted an Indian newspaper to complain of “racist overtones.” The English-language video, titled “7 Sins of India,” accuses the New Delhi government of illegally entering Chinese territory. It includes a man portraying an Indian dressed in a turban and false beard.
PHILIPPINES Police killed at least 26 more drug and crime suspects in overnight gunbattles in the capital, bringing to 58 the death toll in a renewed bloody crackdown in the last three days that received praises from the president.
CAMBODIA Tax authorities denied Wednesday there is a political motive for a crackdown on delinquent taxpayers that prominently targets media and civil society organizations critical of the government.
AUSTRALIA A senator provoked an angry backlash from lawmakers by wearing a burqa in Parliament yesterday as part of her campaign for a national ban on Islamic face covers.
NEW ZEALAND’s trade minister said yesterday he believes there’s an odds-on chance that a group of 11 Pacific nations including Japan and Australia will sign a free-trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, despite the U.S. pulling out.
IRAN The son of Iranian opposition leader Mahdi Karroubi, under house arrest since 2011, says his father has ended a hunger strike over his detention but remains in hospital.
SAUDI ARABIA announced yesterday that it is reopening its border with Qatar to allow Qataris to attend the hajj, despite a months-long rift between Doha and four Arab countries led by Riyadh.
GERMANY Nationalist leader Frauke Petry could face prosecution over allegations she lied under oath, after a parliamentary panel in the eastern state of Saxony recommended yesterday that her immunity should be lifted.
CHILE is rejecting a U.S request to break off all diplomatic and commercial ties with North Korea that was made by Vice President Mike Pence during a visit to the South American nation. Chilean Foreign Minister Heraldo Munoz noted that Chile has “strictly applied” all sanctions imposed on Pyongyang by the U.N. Security Council and characterized the nations’ ties as “distant.”
