AFP, Vatican City
Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas warned on Saturday that moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem would “not help the peace process,” as he opened a Palestinian embassy to the Vatican.
Abbas held a private meeting with Pope Francis before heading to inaugurate the diplomatic mission, located in a building facing the Vatican that also houses the embassies of Peru and Burkina Faso.
Fighting in Brazil prison leaves
10 dead
AP, Rio De Janeiro
Fighting between rival gangs in a prison in northern Brazil on Saturday has reportedly left at least 10 inmates dead in the latest in a series of massacres in the South American country’s penitentiaries. Three of the victims were beheaded.
News website Folha de Sao Paulo said the afternoon riot broke out at the Alcacuz Penitentiary in Rio Grande do Norte state after criminal factions clashed and some cellblocks were invaded by rivals.
Bahrain executes 3 for killing cops
Reuters, Riyadh
Bahraini authorities on Sunday executed three Shi’ite Muslim men convicted of killing an Emirati police officer and two Bahraini policemen in a 2014 bomb attack, in a move likely to stoke protests in the restive Gulf island kingdom. The executions came less than a week after the country’s highest court confirmed the punishment against Abbas al-Samea, Sami Mushaima and Ali al-Singace, the first death sentences to be carried out since 2010. State news agency BNA said the men were executed by firing squad in the presence of a judge, doctor and a Muslim cleric.
S Korea’s THAAD deployment appropriate: Ban
Reuters, Seoul
Former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is expected to run for president of South Korea, said on Sunday it is appropriate for the country to be the site of a U.S. anti-missile system that is due to be deployed later this year.
“Since the reality is the Korean peninsula is in a quasi-war-like state, such action made by the government is appropriate,” Ban was quoted by South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency as saying..
