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News ID: 42787
Publish Date : 12 August 2017 - 21:11

News in Brief


WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) fired back at President Trump, saying Congress "obviously isn’t authorizing war in Venezuela” after Trump said he wouldn’t rule out using a military option in the country.
"No, Congress obviously isn’t authorizing war in Venezuela,” Sasse, a member of the Senate Armed Services committee, said in a statement.  
In remarks to reporters at his New Jersey golf club Friday, Trump said he wouldn’t rule out a "possible military option” in Venezuela. "Venezuela is not very far away, and the people are suffering and they’re dying,” he continued. "We have many options for Venezuela, including a possible military option if necessary.”
Trump declined to say whether American troops would lead a possible military effort in Venezuela, saying: "We don’t talk about it.”
"But a military operation, a military option is certainly something that we could pursue,” he said.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) -- Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar was due to arrive in Moscow Saturday ahead of a meeting with Russia's foreign minister, RIA news agency reported, citing a Russian negotiator.
Haftar is expected to meet Sergei Lavrov on Monday, Lev Dengov, head of the Russian contact group on Libya, told RIA. It was not clear what the pair would be discussing.
At the end of July, Haftar and Libya's Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj committed during talks in France to a conditional ceasefire and to elections, but a Italian naval mission aimed to help the country curb migrant flows has fuelled tension this month. Haftar's self-styled Libyan National Army controls much of eastern and southern Libya.

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WASHINGTON (AFP) -- The U.S. Marine Corps is temporarily grounding all of its aircraft following the crash of an Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft in Australia that killed three troops, officials said.
Marine Corps Commandant General Robert Neller instructed all aviation units to conduct an "operational reset" for a 24-hour period where no flight operations will occur, the Marines said in a statement.
A Japan-based Marine MV-22 Osprey crashed Saturday during an exercise off the Australian coast, killing three service members. The reset will take place over the next two weeks depending on the schedules and needs of the Marines' various air units.
 
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KATHMANDU (AFP) -- Floods and landslides caused by torrential monsoon rains have killed at least 25 people in the last two days across Nepal, officials said Saturday.
Heavy rains have hit more than a dozen districts in the country's far eastern region as well as some areas in the west since Friday morning, the home ministry said.
Flooding has occurred across the densely populated lowlands that border India, while some remote districts in the hilly areas of the far east have been hit by landslides triggered by the monsoon rains.
Telephone and electricity lines have also been affected by the heavy downpour making it difficult to confirm the full extent of the damage in remote areas, the police chief added.

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MOSCOW (AFP) -- The Russian government has nominated former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, a close friend of President Vladimir Putin, to join the board of Rosneft, the energy giant under Western sanctions.
Schroeder was among seven nominees in a decree signed by Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev published on the Russian government's website late Friday. The names will go to a shareholders' vote in late September in a move to increase Rosneft's board from nine to 11.
Schroeder was nominated as a non-executive director of Rosneft, a company born out of Yukos, a state entity that later came under the control of government opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Rosneft, Russia's biggest oil producer, is 50% state-owned.

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BARCELONA, Spain (AP) -- Around a hundred Barcelona residents gathered on the Spanish city's beach on Saturday to protest the unchecked growth of mass tourism to the popular vacation destination.
The protest was organized by a local residents' group under the theme "Recover the beach for everyone!" They say the influx of tourists has increased the price of rents and driven a spike in rowdy behavior by party-seeking foreigners.
Tensions have been growing between authorities and radical leftist groups who launched a campaign of vandalism against mass tourism in Barcelona and other parts of Spain.
Spain, a country of 46 million, received 75.3 million tourists in 2016. The number of arriving tourists increased by 12% in the first six months of this year.