Latin America
Middle East
Central American nations have reached a deal to let the first of thousands of stranded Cuban migrants continue their journey north towards the United States. The humanitarian transfer will airlift an unspecified number of Cubans in the first week of January from Costa Rica to El Salvador, from where they will continue by bus towards Mexico, Costa Rica’s Foreign Ministry said. The Guatemalan Government, which hosted a diplomatic meeting to consider the issue, described it as a “pilot” programme and said a work group has been tasked with coordinating logistics. A woman who threatened a man on a Sydney train has been deemed unfit for a police interview until she recovers in hospital. The 19-year-old Waterloo woman is being treated for a medical condition. A video published by Fairfax media shows a woman swearing at the man and telling him to move at Canterbury station in Sydney’s west. The woman in the video pulls out a chisel. Another man grabs the woman and disarms her. It will take several days to clean-up the wreckage of a derailed freight train that spilled tens of thousands of litres of sulfuric acid in northwest Queensland. Wet weather has hampered efforts to reach the train, with police saying one damaged carriage has leaked 31,500 litres of the convoy’s 819,000-litre load. A 2km exclusion zone was established after all 26 carriages overturned, 20km east of Julia Creek, on Sunday. motorists, who risked steep fines, widely respected the ban on its first day. Rome, which is also battling smog, has been enforcing alternate day driving based on odd and even numbers on license plates, while Florence has announced limits on automobile access to the historic centre until New Year’s Eve. Some of Vladimir Putin’s saltiest one-liners have been turned into a book by his supporters. The Words that are changing the World is the latest expression of admiration from fans who cast the President as the saviour of modern Russia. “We had begun to notice that everything which Putin says comes to pass to one degree or another,” said Anton Volodin, author of the book, published by a proKremlin group called Network. Among memorable quotes are Putin’s threat to “rub out” Chechen militants in the “out house” and a bizarre brushoff of Latvia in which he told Riga it could only expect to receive “the ears of a dead donkey” from Moscow, a Russian expression for nothing. An Israeli anti-settlement watchdog group said the Government has quietly worked on plans to build more than 8000 homes in a strategic section of the West Bank near Jerusalem. Peace Now said the homes are among more than 55,000 housing units at various stages of planning by Israel’s Housing Ministry. It said it had obtained the data after a two-year legal battle in response to a freedom of information request. The group said the 8372 units are envisioned for the strategic area known as E1. The Palestinians strongly object to settlement of the area, saying it would separate a future Palestinian state in the West Bank from East Jerusalem. Iraq pledged to use newly reclaimed Ramadi as a springboard to take Isis’ stronghold of Mosul, although experts warned it could be another year before ground forces were ready. After a week of urban combat, Iraqi troops raised the national flag over Ramadi’s government compound. Security analysts said that unlike in Ramadi, where Isis had