World briefs

PHILIPPINES A senator who is President Rodrigo Duterte’s fiercest critic in Congress remained holed up in the Senate yesterday to avoid what he considers an illegal arrest after Duterte voided his amnesty for his role in failed coup plots as a former rebel military officer.

MALAYSIA-SINGAPORE The two countries agreed yesterday to delay, not cancel, a planned high-speed railway that would cut travel time between their capitals to just 90 minutes.

PAKISTAN’s newly-elected Prime Minister Imran Khan met with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Islamabad yesterday, saying he was “optimistic” he could reset the relationship with Washington after the U.S. suspended aid over the country’s alleged failure to combat militants.

INDIA Police were searching yesterday for 22 people who were missing after a motorized boat capsized in the flooded Brahmaputra River in India’s remote northeast. Three bodies were recovered and 11 people were rescued.

SYRIA Israeli jets flying high over Lebanon struck at targets inside Syria, Syrian state media reported, in a rare daytime raid that killed at least one person.

IRAN’s rial fell to a record low yesterday as worried residents of Tehran lined up outside beleaguered moneychangers, part of a staggering 140-percent drop in the currency’s value since America pulled out of the nuclear deal only four months ago.

ROMANIA The mayor of Bucharest launched an attack on the powerful leader of Romania’s ruling party, saying he should resign for the good of “the party and country.”

BALKANS A meeting discussing cooperation in the volatile Balkans was held yesterday without a representative from Kosovo amid continuing tensions stemming from the 1990s wars.

BRITAIN charged two alleged Russian military intelligence officers with the nerve agent poisoning of ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury, officials said yesterday, though authorities held out little hope of being able to bring them to justice.

BRAZIL Firefighters found bone fragments from a collection in the still-smoldering National Museum, an official said, raising hopes that a famed skull might somehow have survived a massive blaze that turned historic and scientific artifacts to ashes.

PERU Some 300 Venezuelans gathered outside of their country’s embassy shouting “We want to leave!” after President Nicolas Maduro offered to airlift migrants who wanted to return back to their homeland.