NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
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Syrian children: The U.N. children’s agency warned Friday that a critical funding shortfall is threatening aid to 9 million Syrian children, both in their country and among the refugees in neighboring states. UNICEF said the $220 million budget gap to its Syria relief programs is the worst it has faced since the start of the conflict, in 2011. It appealed for $1.4 billion in 2017 to provide relief and education to children orphaned, displaced, wounded or otherwise affected by the Syria war.
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Missing sailors: Seven Navy sailors are missing and two were injured — including the captain — after a U.S. destroyer collided Saturday morning with a Philippine-registered container ship 56 nautical miles off the coast of Yokusuka in southwest Japan, the country’s coast guard reported. TV footage showed heavy damage to the mid-right side of the Fitzgerald. The U.S. Navy said flooding has been stabilized on the damaged destroyer and sailors from the Dewey have come aboard to assist. Adm. John Richardson, chief of Naval Operations at Yokosuka, said Navy, Japanese maritime defense vessels and the Japanese coast guard are offering joint assistance.
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Kashmir ambush: Six police were killed Friday when rebels fighting against Indian rule ambushed a police vehicle in Indian-controlled Kashmir, while two civilians were killed and several others injured in clashes that erupted during a gunbattle between rebels and government forces in the disputed region, officials and witnesses said. Anti-India sentiment runs deep among the region’s mostly Muslim population and most people support the rebels’ cause against Indian rule. India has accused Pakistan of arming and training the rebels, which Pakistan denies.
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Disputed area: Djibouti has lodged a formal complaint with the African Union after accusing soldiers from neighboring Eritrea of occupying a contested mountainous area after Qatari peacekeepers left the region this week, an official said. The moves threatened to renew a long-running territorial dispute between the two East African nations that Qatar, now caught up in a diplomatic clash with other Arab nations, had helped to mediate. Qatar pulled all of its troops after Eritrea expressed support for the Saudi-led move to isolate Qatar amid a diplomatic dispute. Eritrea in the past has clashed with both Djibouti and Ethiopia over borders.
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Gun amnesty: Australia will allow gun owners to hand in illegal firearms without penalty starting next month as concerns grow over gun crimes involving such weapons, a federal minister said Friday. The three-month nationwide amnesty on surrendered firearms will be Australia’s first since 1996, when a lone gunman killed 35 people in Tasmania state and galvanized support for tough national gun controls. Justice Minister Michael Keenan said the new amnesty was needed to reduce the number of guns in the community because of new security threats including Islamic extremism. There have been five violent incidents in Australia that the government describes as terrorist attacks since the national terror threat level was raised in September 2014. Three involved illegal guns and two involved knives.
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National elections: Lebanon’s parliament has ratified a new electoral law, paving the way for the first national elections since 2009.The new law preserves the seat allocations in parliament to the country’s various Muslim and Christian sects, over the objections of civil campaigners.