AFP, Aden
Saudi and Emirati envoys shuttled between Yemeni government forces and besieging southern separatists in second city Aden on Thursday in a bid to end a tense standoff after days of deadly infighting.
The Sunday assault on the embattled government’s headquarters by its former allies has opened up a new front in the devastating civil war that has created what the United Nations says is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Japan fire kills 11 at home for elderly people
AFP, Tokyo
Eleven people were killed in northern Japan after fire broke out at a home for elderly people with financial difficulties, police said on Thursday.
Television footage showed the three-storey building engulfed in flames and dozens of firefighters battling the blaze in snowy conditions.
Pictures of the aftermath showed the blackened husk of the building, whose roof had apparently collapsed due to the fire.
Polish Senate passes Holocaust bill
AFP, Warsaw
Poland’s senate today passed a controversial Holocaust bill, which was designed to defend the country’s image abroad but has instead sparked a diplomatic row with Israel.
The upper house of parliament voted 57-23, with two abstentions, to approve the bill, which sets fines or a maximum three-year jail term for anyone who refers to Nazi German death camps as Polish or accuses Poland of complicity in the Third Reich’s crimes.
One killed as train carrying GOP
lawmakers hits truck
AFP, Washington
A train carrying several dozen Republican lawmakers including US House Speaker Paul Ryan collided with a garbage truck Wednesday in Virginia, killing one person and sending six others, including a congressman, to hospital, officials said.
The White House said no members of Congress were seriously injured, and that President Donald Trump had been briefed on the accident.
At least 300 people, including lawmakers, their families and staff, were aboard the train from Washington bound for a Republican policy retreat in West Virginia.
