Putin and Abe talk on territorial disputes
The leaders of Russia and Japan met at a hot springs resort in western Japan on Thursday for talks on a territorial dispute that has divided their countries for 70 years.
For Russian President Vladimir Putin, the summit meeting marks his first official visit to a G-7 country since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.
Rebels kill 4 Indian policemen
AP, Gauhati
Heavily armed rebels on Thursday killed four Indian police officers in an ambush on a highway they were guarding hours before the visit of the top elected official of an insurgency-wracked northeastern state, police said.
Another three officers were wounded in the attack in Lokchao area in Manipur state close to India’s border with Myanmar, according to the police control room.
US boy buried alive under snow
BBC Online
A boy who was playing in a huge snow mound has died after it collapsed and buried him under tonnes of snow.
Joshua Demarest, 13, died but his friend Tyler Day was found alive after being submerged for hours in New York.
Brexit trade deal may take 10 years
BBC Online
A post-Brexit UK-EU trade deal might take 10 years to finalise and still fail, Britain’s ambassador to the EU has privately told the government.
The BBC understands Sir Ivan Rogers warned ministers that the European consensus was that a deal might not be done until the early to mid-2020s.
Beijing issues red alert for air pollution
Reuters, Beijing
Beijing city government has issued a red alert for severely high levels of air pollution in the city for five days from late on Friday until Dec. 21, the Beijing environmental protection bureau said on its official Twitter-like Weibo account.
The incoming smog was due to an accumulation of air pollution in Beijing and surrounding areas, including Tianjin city and Hebei, Shandong and Hunan provinces, according to Thursday’s post, which cited forecasts from the China Environmental Monitoring Center.
38 Afghans deported from Germany
Reuters, Kabul
A group of 38 Afghans arrived in Kabul from Germany on Thursday, the first to be deported under an agreement reached between the two countries this year, following the rejection of their applications for asylum.
Thousands of Afghans joined asylum-seekers from the Middle East and elsewhere entering Europe from 2015, and became the second biggest group of asylum seekers in Germany in 2016 after Syrians, according to German data.
Car bomb explodes in Mogadishu
Reuters, Mogadishu
A suicide car bomb exploded on Thursday at a checkpoint near Somalia’s national theatre in the capital Mogadishu, police said.
