Politics

  SITTWE / AP Hundreds of hard-line Buddhists in a Myanmar state wracked by religious violence protested against the government’s plan to give citizenship to some members of the persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority community. Rakhine state’s dominant Arakan National Party led the protest in Sittwe, the state capital, where many Rohingya lived before an outbreak of inter-communal violence in 2012 ...

  MANILA / AP Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Sunday that his militarily inferior country can’t stop China’s actions in contested waters, responding to a reported plan by Beijing to construct an environmental monitoring station in a disputed shoal off the northwestern Philippines. Duterte, however, warned that he would invoke a July 12 arbitration ruling that invalidated China’s territorial ...

  BEIJING / AP US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Saturday pushed for closer China-US cooperation on dealing with North Korea’s nuclear program in his first face-to-face talks with top Chinese diplomats. Tillerson’s visit to Beijing followed his remarks in South Korea on Friday in which he warned that pre-emptive military action against North Korea might be necessary if ...

  MOSCOW / AP Russia’s lower house of parliament is launching an investigation into US news media that operate in Russia, a move that comes amid growing suspicion in America of Russian interference. A statement on the website of the chamber, the Duma, does not specify how the investigation would be conducted or what might be done with its results. ...

  LONDON / AP Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown says Scotland should get more sweeping powers but remain in the United Kingdom. Brown entered the fray over the region’s future on Saturday with a speech in Scotland saying Brexit makes the case for Scottish independence weaker, not stronger. He said Scotland should be able to set some tax rates, ...

  BERLIN / AP Germany’s foreign minister says Turkey’s chances of joining the European Union are dwindling, but the country might one day hope for a privileged partnership with the bloc. Sigmar Gabriel told German weekly Der Spiegel in an interview published Saturday that “Turkey is further away than ever before from EU membership.” Gabriel, whose center-left Social Democrats have ...

  HOMS / AP Scores of Syrian opposition fighters and their families began leaving the last rebel-held neighborhood in the central city of Homs on Saturday as part of a Russian-backed evacuation deal signed earlier this week. By midday around 100 fighters and their families had left the city, once known as the epicenter of the 2011 uprising against President ...

  ORLY / AP Soldiers at Paris’ busy Orly Aiport shot and killed a man who wrestled one of their colleagues to the ground and tried to steal her rifle on Saturday, officials said. Thousands of travellers were evacuated and at least 15 flights were diverted to the city’s other airport, Charles de Gaulle. No one else was hurt. Police ...

  WASHINGTON / AP President Donald Trump defiantly refused to back down from his explosive claim that Barack Obama wiretapped his phones, and sidestepped any blame for the White House decision to highlight an unverified report that Britain helped carry out the alleged surveillance. In brushing off the diplomatic row with perhaps America’s closest ally, Trump also revived another: the ...

  Bloomberg Dutch voters turned out in force to back pro-European parties and help Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s Liberals easily beat off an election challenge by the anti-Islam Freedom Party of Geert Wilders, drawing a line in the sand over the spread of populism. With votes counted in all but one of the country’s 388 municipalities, the Liberal Party had ...