UN chief visits quake-hit Indonesian city
AP, Jakarta
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday visited an Indonesian city shattered by an earthquake and tsunami to personally assess the impact of the disasters.
Guterres is attending the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank on the island of Bali. He paid a visit to the hard-hit city of Palu on Sulawesi island, where Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla welcomed him at the partly damaged airport
Putin-Trump meeting in Paris on Nov 11 likely
Reuters, Moscow
Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump could meet in Paris on Nov. 11 if both leaders take part in the same event to commemorate the end of World War One, RIA news agency cited the Russian foreign ministry as saying on Friday.
Russia is open to dialogue and would be ready to consider times and locations of a possible meeting between the two leaders if Washington were also interested, the ministry said.
Catalonia’s separatist front shatters
AFP, Barcelona
Catalonia’s separatist parties that brought the region to the brink of breaking away from Spain a year ago, shattered their united front this week in a struggle over strategy toward independence.
The separatists on Tuesday lost the majority they have enjoyed in the Catalan parliament since September 2015 due to a rift over how to respond to a court suspension of six jailed or exiled lawmakers accused of rebellion.
China opposes Malaysia’s release of 11 Uighur Muslims
Reuters, Beijing
China said on Friday that it resolutely opposed Malaysia’s decision to release 11 ethnic Uighur Muslims from detention and send them to Turkey, disregarding China’s request to hand them to Beijing.
China was in the process of verifying details with Malaysia and hoped that the Southeast Asian nation would “attach great importance” to its concerns, China’s Foreign Ministry said in a faxed statement to Reuters.
Taliban attacks kill 8 in Afghan’s north
AP, Kabul
An Afghan official says attacks by the Taliban in the country’s north have killed eight people – four soldiers and four civilians.
Military spokesman Hanif Rezaie says the troops died in Kunduz province when the Taliban attacked a military outpost in the district of Archi on Friday morning. He says six were wounded in the assault.
Rezaie says the civilians were killed on Thursday, when a car bomb targeting an election campaign headquarters in Faryab province exploded prematurely.
