AFP, Brussels
Top US and NATO officials stressed the importance of preserving transatlantic security ties on Tuesday amid doubts raised by Donald Trump’s election as president.
Trump stoked concerns that Washington’s near 70-year European defence guarantee might no longer hold when he said on the campaign trail he would think twice about helping NATO allies who did not pay their defence dues.
50 people missing off Yemen as ship sinks
AFP, Aden
More than 50 people are missing and just two have been rescued after a cargo vessel sank off Yemen’s Socotra island, authorities said on Wednesday.
The government has issued an SOS to merchant vessels and warships in the area to help search for any survivors from the ship that went missing on Friday, Fisheries Minister Fahd Kavieen said.
Greek journos on 24-hour strike to protest austerity
AP, Athens
Greek journalists are striking to protest austerity measures, pulling all television and radio news broadcasts off the air a day before a nationwide general strike expected to shut down services across the country.
Wednesday’s media strike meant news websites were not being updated until Thursday morning, and no Thursday newspapers would be published.
Italian PM Renzi to resign on Friday
Reuters, Rome
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi will hand in his resignation on Friday, a parliamentary source said, as President Sergio Mattarella seeks to slow the pace of an unfolding political crisis.
Renzi vowed to resign in the early hours of Monday after a bruising referendum loss, but Mattarella, whose powers include naming prime ministers and dissolving parliament, asked him to stay on until the 2017 budget passes in a parliamentary vote scheduled for later on Wednesday.
Journalist murdered
in Kirkuk
AFP, Kirkuk
Gunmen killed the head of a local radio station in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Tuesday, the latest in a string of such murders in the troubled country.
“Unidentified gunmen driving a white car assassinated Mohammed Thabet al-Obeidi,” a Kirkuk police colonel told AFP, adding that the journalist was on his way to work in the city centre when he was shot.
Philippine rebels threaten to end cease-fire
AP, Manila
Philippine communist rebels have warned President Rodrigo Duterte that they may be forced to end their cease-fire and resume fighting if he does not suspend the government’s counterinsurgency program and withdraw troops from rebel-influenced areas.
The Communist Party of the Philippines said Wednesday that if Duterte fulfills the demands by January and releases remaining political detainees through an amnesty, it can guarantee the cease-fire’s extension, helping to foster peace talks.
