News in Brief

Date: 22 October 2017 - 20:56

News ID: ۴۵۵۵۶

MOSCOW (AFP) -- Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny walked free Sunday after a 20-day jail term for organizing protests against President Vladimir Putin.
Navalny, who has declared his intention to stand for president in 2018, was released in a secret location in Moscow early Sunday to evade media attention.
"Hi. I'm out," Navalny wrote on Instagram, posting a picture of himself on a street. A photographer working for his team later posted photographs of him meeting colleagues at the office of his anti-corruption foundation.
During Navalny's time behind bars, the Kremlin race he hopes to contest has heated up with television star Ksenia Sobchak throwing in her hat.
Navalny said he was "ready to work" and would meet supporters later Sunday in the southern city of Astrakhan at a rally timed for 1400 GMT. The event in the city 1,300 kilometers southeast of Moscow has permission from the authorities.

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JAKARTA (Reuters) -- Indonesia intends to send a diplomatic note to the U.S. secretary of state and summon Washington's deputy ambassador in Jakarta to explain why the head of its military was denied entry to the United States, Indonesian officials said Sunday.
Armed Forces Commander Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo was about to board a flight on Saturday when the airline informed him that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection had denied him entry, military spokesman Wuryanto told a news conference in Jakarta.
Nurmantyo was going to the United States at the invitation of General Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, to attend a Chiefs of Defense Conference on Countering Violent Extremism being held in Washington on Oct. 23-24, Wuryanto said.
Indonesia, the world's biggest Muslim-majority country, generally enjoys good ties with the United States.

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WASHINGTON (AFP) -- Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter says he has offered to go to North Korea on behalf of the White House to try to allay rising tensions, but has not been asked, the New York Times reported Sunday.
"I would go, yes," Carter told the Times in an interview at his home when asked if he would go on such a trip for the Donald Trump administration.
The 93-year-old Democrat, who was president from 1977 to 1981, said he had told the Republican president's National Security Advisor HR McMaster that he "was available if they ever need me."
In 1994 Carter had traveled to Pyongyang to negotiate with Kim Il-sung, the current leader's grandfather, over the North's nuclear program, the Times said.
In recent months President Trump has engaged in an escalating war of words with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, trading personal insults and threatening to "totally destroy" North Korea if it threatens the United States.
Asked about the verbal attacks, Carter told the Times he is "afraid, too, of a situation." Calling Kim Jong-Un "unpredictable," Carter said he worried the young leader could take pre-emptive action.

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KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan's paramilitary force says it has killed eight alleged "terrorists" in an overnight shootout in Karachi.
A statement issued Sunday says that paramilitary Rangers along with counterterrorism police raided a house, triggering an hours-long shootout. It says five "terrorists" were killed inside the hideout while three others were wounded and later died on the way to a hospital.
The statement says a counterterrorism officer and two paramilitary troops were wounded.
It says two of the gunmen who were killed were identified as members of the Ansar al-Shariya militant group, and that weapons and explosives were seized from the hideout.

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TOKYO (Reuters) -- Tens of thousands of people across Japan were advised to evacuate, hundreds of flights were cancelled and train services disrupted on election day Sunday as a typhoon roared towards the coast, bringing heavy rain and strong winds.
Typhoon Lan, classified as an intense Category 4 storm by the Tropical Storm Risk monitoring site, was south of Japan and moving northeast at 50 kph on Sunday night, speeding up slightly, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said.
Lan appeared to have weakened slightly from its peak, but it was still a powerful storm that could pound parts of Japan with more than 80 mm of rain an hour, an agency official told reporters.
It was set to make landfall on Japan's main island of Honshu, possibly near Tokyo, early on Monday, at which time it is likely to have weakened to a Category 2 storm.

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ADDIS ABABA (AP) -- Regional officials in Ethiopia say 11 people were killed in clashes in the restive Oromia region as the country continues to experience anti-government protests that at times lead to ethnic violence.
The Oromia and Amhara regional states spokesmen on Sunday issued statements after a week of unrest in Oromia that reportedly caused major business disruptions and the burning of several vehicles and properties in various locations.
Addis Arega, spokesman of the Oromia region, said in a Facebook post Sunday that eight ethnic Oromos and three Amharas were killed in the Buno Bedele zone of the Oromia region.
Spokesman for the Amhara region Nigusu Tilahun said on Sunday that in addition to the 11 killings properties were destroyed and citizens displaced.