Washington / AP U.S. officials say the Pentagon’s long-awaited plan to shut down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and transfer the remaining detainees to a facility in the United States calls for up to $475 million in construction costs that would ultimately be offset by as much as $180 million per year in operating cost savings. The plan, ...

Washington / AP President Barack Obama sent lawmakers an official $1.9 billion request to combat the spread of the Zika virus in Latin America and the U.S. He is also requesting flexibility to use a limited portion of leftover funds provided in 2014 to fight Ebola to take on Zika, which has been linked to severe birth defects. Top House ...

New York / AP Starbucks is changing the terms of its rewards program so that people who spend around $5 or less per visit won’t get as many freebies. The Seattle-based coffee chain says its loyalty program will award stars based on the dollars spent starting in April. Currently, people earn a star for each transaction, regardless of how much ...

Bloomberg The sea stretched toward the horizon last New Year’s Eve as the Theo T, a red-and-white tug at her side, slipped quietly beneath the Corpus Christi Harbor Bridge in Texas. Few Americans knew she was sailing into history. Inside the Panamax oil tanker was a cargo that some on Capitol Hill had dubbed “Liquid American Freedom” — the first ...

Beijing / AFP Beijing is installing radar facilities on its artificial islands in the disputed South China Sea, an American think tank has said, in a move analysts warned would “exponentially improve” the country’s monitoring capacities. Satellite imagery of Cuarteron reef in the Spratlys released by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) showed what appeared to be ...

Jakarta / AFP Singapore has deported four suspected Indonesian extremists allegedly heading to Syria to fight with the IS group, authorities said on Tuesday. The four, who included a 15-year-old boy, were arrested on Sunday in the city-state when officials became suspicious after checking their documents and finding one of them had previously spent time in Syria, Indonesian police said. ...

New Delhi / AP Engineers were working to restore New Delhi’s full water supply on Tuesday after protesters damaged a key canal in a neighboring state and disrupted supplies over the weekend — highlighting the extreme water vulnerability faced by the Indian capital’s 18 million residents. Some supplies resumed to northern and central parts of New Delhi, and will hopefully ...

Seoul / AFP China’s ambassador to South Korea warned on Tuesday that the planned deployment of a US missile defence system in the country could damage Beijing-Seoul ties, possibly irreparably. Once damaged, it would be “hard” to normalise relations between the two former Cold War enemies, ambassador Qiu Guohong said, according to a spokesman for South Korea’s main opposition Minju ...

Kiev / AFP Germany and France on Tuesday urged Kiev to root out corruption and quickly adopt a law on elections in the pro-Russian east that may help resolve Ukraine’s separatist war. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier arrived in Kiev amid political chaos that has seen ministers in the pro-EU government trade accusations of ...

Riyadh / AFP The leader of Africa’s number one oil producer was in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, with analysts forecasting his country’s eventual support for an output freeze to stabilise prices. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari is to meet King Salman before travelling on to Qatar. The official Saudi Press Agency reported late Monday that Buhari had landed in Riyadh, where ...