MYANMAR Journalists saw new fires burning yesterday in a Myanmar village that had been abandoned by Rohingya Muslims, and pages ripped from Islamic texts that were left on the ground. That intensifies doubts about government claims that members of the persecuted minority have been destroying their own homes. The United Nations says some 146,000 people have fled Myanmar into Bangladesh since violence erupted there on August 25.
CHINA-S. KOREA South Korea has warned its citizens in China to avoid “friction” and “needless arguments” with Chinese people after the U.S. military added more launchers to a contentious missile defense system in South Korea that Beijing opposes.
PHILIPPINES The son and son-in-law of the Philippine president (pictured), who has been accused of condoning extrajudicial killings of thousands of drug suspects, yesterday appeared in a Senate inquiry looking into a huge shipment of illegal drugs from China that slipped through Manila’s port.
VIETNAM Authorities have seized more than a ton of smuggled ivory at a Vietnamese port where some 6 tons were seized last year. A customs official said the ivory seized in Cat Lai port had been packed with sawdust and layers of plasters and asphalt to hide it.
AUSTRALIA’s highest court cleared the way yesterday for the government to conduct a public survey on whether gay marriage should be legalized. Opinion polls show that most Australians want same-sex marriage legalized.
ISRAEL-SYRIA Israeli warplanes struck a military position near the Mediterranean coast in western Syria yesterday, killing two soldiers and causing material damage, the Syrian army said.
EGYPT An international rights group says Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has given a “green light” to systematic torture inside detention facilities, allowing officers to act with “almost total impunity.”
RUSSIA-UKRAINE The United States cautiously welcomed a Russian proposal to send U.N. peacekeepers into eastern Ukraine, but insisted the force should be deployed throughout embattled eastern Ukraine and not just on the line of conflict.
COLOMBIA Pope Francis urged Colombians yesterday to come together to heal the divisions spawned by five decades of armed conflict and address the entrenched inequality that sparked Latin America’s longest-running armed rebellion.
