World Briefs

SOUTH CHINA SEA China bluntly told the United States to stop sending ships and military aircraft close to islands claimed by Beijing in the South China Sea, during talks that set the stage for a meeting between President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping later this month. 

THAILAND’s Democrat Party retained Abhisit Vejjajiva, a former prime minister, as its leader ahead of a general election expected in 2019 that would end more than four years of military rule. 

MYANMAR The repatriation of ethnic Rohingya Muslims from Bangladesh, to which more than 700,000 fled since last year to escape deadly violence carried out by Myanmar’s security forces, will begin this week, top Myanmar officials said yesterday.

KOREA The North and South Korean militaries completed withdrawing troops and firearms from 22 front-line guard posts on the weekend as they continue to implement a wide-ranging agreement reached in September to reduce tensions across the world’s most fortified border. 

IRAN-PAKISTAN A Pakistani official says Iranian border guards have killed two people trying to cross through an illegal route from the Panjgur district in Baluchistan.

YEMEN Street battles raged yesterday in several areas of Yemen’s contested port city of Hodeida, where a U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition is trying to drive out Iran-backed Shiite rebels, officials said.

TURKEY’s president said that at least seven soldiers were killed and 25 others wounded in an explosion at an ammunition depot at a base in the southeast.

POLAND’s president has addressed thousands of people ahead of an Independence Day march in Warsaw that has for the first time been jointly organized by state officials and nationalist organizations.

NORWAY A powerful earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 struck in the Arctic Ocean, northwest of a largely uninhabited and remote Norwegian island, officials said. No injuries or damage were reported.

US Authorities called in a mobile DNA lab and anthropologists to help identify the dead as the search went on for victims of the most destructive wildfire in California history. The death toll stood at 23 yesterday and appeared likely to climb.

BRAZIL Ten people were killed and 11 injured in a mudslide near Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian authorities said. Rescue workers were searching for victims and survivors trapped under the debris and mud.