WORLD HEADLINES
By Kanupriya Kapoor CILACAP, Indonesia (Reuters) – Nine drug traffickers held emotional farewell meetings with their families at an Indonesian prison on Tuesday, after Jakarta rejected last-ditch pleas from around the world for clemency and ordered their mass execution to proceed within hours. “I won’t see him again,” said Raji Sukumaran, the mother of an Australian who will go before a firing squad along with a fellow countryman and convicts
By Mohammed Ghobari CAIRO (Reuters) – Heavy fighting between Iranian-allied Houthi militia and local tribesmen killed at least 15 people in Yemen’s oil-producing Marib province and an air strike targeted the home of a senior Houthi official, residents and tribal and medical sources said. Yemeni Vice President Khaled Bahah had called on the Houthis on Monday to heed a U.N. Security Council demand for an end to fighting. The conflict
Spanish emergency services safely evacuated around 150 people from a burning ferry crossing the Mediterranean from the island of Mallorca to the Spanish port of Valencia, government and port authorities said on Tuesday. The ‘Sorrento’ ferry, belonging to the Italian company Atlantica di Navigazione although operated by Trasmediterranea-Acciona, sent out distress signals, the Ministry of Public Works said in a statement. The port authority said 170 passengers were rescued. Atlantica
European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini will meet Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in New York later on Tuesday for talks on Iran’s nuclear program and other issues, an EU official said. The main purpose of Mogherini’s visit to New York is to hold talks with other countries on the migration crisis in the Mediterranean. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking before talks with Zarif on Monday,
The United States and Japan sought to reinvigorate their 70-year-old alliance in the face of China’s ever-increasing clout Tuesday, as President Barack Obama welcomed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to the White House. Hailing the alliance as the “cornerstone of peace and security in the Asia-Pacific region,” the two countries vowed to counter new threats and increase military deterrence. They pledged to forge a Trans-Pacific trade deal that would encompass 12
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — The killing of a policeman by a Muslim gunman prompted Bosnian Serb leaders on Tuesday to renew calls for independence from the federation forged in a U.S.-brokered peace deal in 1995. That’s dangerous talk in the Balkans, whose economically depressed states are rife with ethnic rivalries and border disputes that could explode at any moment.
Iranian naval ships fired across the bow of a Marshall Islands-flagged cargo vessel in the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, and forced it to head to Iranian territory, US defense officials said. At least five Iranian ships demanded that the Maersk Tigris, which had no Americans on board, head to Larak Island. The cargo ship’s captain “declined” the demand and one of the Iranian vessels “fired shots” across the bow
Saudi Arabia has arrested nearly 100 jihadists, mostly linked to the Islamic State group, and foiled several plots to carry out attacks including on the American embassy, authorities said Tuesday. The arrests have taken place since December and most of those detained were Saudis, the interior ministry said in a statement published by the official news agency SPA. It said two Syrians and a Saudi who had threatened to launch
By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will meet U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at the opening of a UN conference on the global anti-nuclear weapons treaty on Monday, as they try to make progress in talks on a long-term atomic deal. Iran’s top diplomat will be the first state party to the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to address its 190 signatories
By Gopal Sharma, Rupam Jain Nair and Ross Adkin KATHMANDU, Nepal (Reuters) – Nepalese officials scrambled on Monday to get aid from the main airport to people left homeless and hungry by a devastating earthquake two days earlier, while thousands tired of waiting fled the capital Kathmandu for the surrounding plains. By afternoon, the death toll from Saturday’s 7.9 magnitude earthquake had climbed to more than 3,700, and reports trickling
