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  Jakarta / Tribune News Service Farmers in the Pelalawan village of Pelalawan, Pangkalan Kerinci, used to employ the slash and burn method when it came to clearing their land for farmland or rice fields. That approach triggered massive fires as the soil in the village was combustible, especially with peatland at a depth of around 3-9 meters. In a ...

  Paris / AFP Transport chaos hit France again on Wednesday, just nine days ahead of Euro 2016, as railway workers went on strike in the latest salvo of a months-long battle between the government and unions. Between a third and half of France’s trains were expected to grind to a halt, as workers from railway operator SNCF launched their ...

  BEIJING / AFP Chinese President Xi Jinping urged all parties to disputes on the Korean Peninsula to maintain calm and restraint in a meeting on Wednesday with a high-ranking North Korean envoy that appeared aimed at easing strains in the bilateral relationship. Xi’s meeting with Ri Su Yong, head of the ruling Workers Party of Korea’s international department, came ...

  Brussels / AFP The European Union on Wednesday formally warned Poland’s rightwing government that it must roll back its overhaul of the top Polish court, which critics warn endangers its independence. “We have decided to send a rule-of-law opinion to the Polish authorities,” European Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans said. “Despite our best efforts we have not been ...

  Manila / AFP Media groups expressed outrage on Wednesday at Philippine president-elect Rodrigo Duterte’s endorsement of killing corrupt journalists, warning his comments could incite more murders in a nation already one of the world’s most dangerous for reporters. Duterte, who won last month’s elections in a landslide after pledging to kill tens of thousands of criminals, told reporters on ...

Near Fallujah / AFP Iraqi forces struggled on Wednesday to break into Fallujah city centre where hundreds of fighters from the IS group and some 50,000 increasingly desperate civilians were holed up. Fighting also raged hundreds of kilometres further up the Euphrates Valley in Syria, as US-backed Kurdish and Arab fighters opened a new front against the extremists in the ...

  BEIRUT / AP Kurdish-led Syrian fighters have launched a new advance on the northern town of Manbij, a key IS stronghold, with the aid of US-led airstrikes, a spokesman for the fighters and a monitoring group said on Wednesday. The United Nations meanwhile said it was looking into “every possible means” to deliver life-saving aid to besieged Syrians now ...

  Kampala / AFP Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye’s treason trial began on Wednesday with the prosecutor saying he could not be brought to court for security reasons. Besigye, who claimed fraud after coming second in February’s presidential election, was arrested last month for holding a mock swearing-in ceremony and charged with treason. He is being held at the maximum ...

London / AFP A coroner on Wednesday ordered a re-examination of the deaths of 21 people in the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings, one of Britain’s worst ever terror attacks, after claims that police failed to act on two warnings. Coroner Louise Hunt ordered new inquests for the victims killed in the twin attacks, which were widely blamed on the Provisional ...

WASHINGTON Hong Kong television commentator Wu Jun observed recently that despite Donald Trump’s anti-Beijing rhetoric, he “could in fact be the best president for China.” The Chinese analyst is right: A Trump presidency could open the way for China’s strategic dominance in Asia and elsewhere. Wu’s comment was focused on Trump’s mercantilist style, evoking a world in which Trump and ...