World Briefs

NEPAL

An alliance of two major communist parties, one Maoist and the other Marxist-Leninist, is leading parliamentary election results in Nepal and could be forming the next government in the Himalayan nation.

VIETNAM Police have arrested a senior Communist Party official for alleged wrongdoing while he was head of energy giant PetroVietnam, official media said.

RUSSIA Authorities denied that a radioactivity spike in the air over Europe this fall resulted from a nuclear fuel processing plant leak in the Ural mountains, saying their probe has found no release of radioactivity there.

INDIA-PAKISTAN A Pakistani human rights activist who has campaigned for friendly ties with India has gone missing in the eastern city of Lahore.

IRAN-BRITAIN

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson raised the case yesterday of a dual national detained for allegedly plotting against Iran’s government, when he met with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani during a two-day trip to Tehran.

IRAQ After more than three years of combat operations, Iraq has announced that the fight against the Islamic State group is over after the country’s security forces drove the extremists from all of the territory they once held. Iraqi and American officials warned, however, that key challenges remain despite the military victory.

SOUTH SUDAN Over 1.2 million people in war-torn South Sudan are one step away from famine — twice as many as at the same time last year — and in early 2018 half the country’s population will be reliant on emergency food aid, the U.N. humanitarian chief said.

ITALY’s

governing Democrats led a rally Saturday to warn about fascism making a comeback in the nation that once suffered under fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and which is now seeing a rash of right-wing protests against migrants.

SPAIN AND PORTUGAL have issued warnings of high winds and heavy rain as a storm reaches the Iberian Peninsula from the Atlantic.

US

A commercial fishing vessel carrying foreign workers that ran aground and later burned and leaked fuel just off the beaches of Waikiki, Hawaii was towed out to sea and sunk by a team of salvage workers.

BRAZIL President Michel Temer lost a key liaison in Congress Friday as he struggles to corral enough votes to push through an ambitious pension reform.