370,000 Rohingyas flee Myanmar
DHAKA, Bangladesh — The number of Rohingya refugees fleeing a military crackdown in Myanmar has now topped 370,000, a crisis that the United Nations human rights chief called “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”
Hundreds of thousands of the ethnic minority continued to stream via land and rickety boats into Bangladesh this week, arriving exhausted, dehydrated and recounting tales of nightmarish horrors at the hands of the Myanmar military, including friends and neighbors shot dead and homes torched before their eyes.
Relief efforts have been rapidly overwhelmed, with stocks of food, temporary shelter kits and other supplies running low. Prices of vegetables, bamboo and plastic sheeting used to makes shelter are soaring.
Norway PM in second term
Prime Minister Erna Solberg became Norway’s first Conservative Party leader in over three decades to be reelected as a movement to stop further oil exploration in western Europe’s biggest petroleum producer fizzled.
An economic rebound and declining joblessness won over voters in Scandinavia’s richest nation. The 56-year-old, and the groups of lawmakers who support her, achieved a late summer comeback to stay in power after spending record amounts of oil wealth over the past four years to support the economy amid a slump in crude prices.
The result shows the power of the purse in European elections. Ms. Solberg pumped money into an economy that a year after she first took office was pummeled by a slump in oil prices. Her stimulus program included becoming Norway’s first premier to take money directly from Norway’s almost $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund to increase the government’s budget.
Protests over French labor
PARIS — The Eiffel Tower saw service cutbacks, angry carnival workers snarled traffic around the Arc de Triomphe and police used water cannon and tear gas as unions held protests in Paris and elsewhere Tuesday against planned changes to French labor laws.
The day of protests was the first collective outcry against President Emmanuel Macron’s bid to power the economy and boost jobs by tackling France’s rigid labor rules to make it easier to hire and fire workers.
The hard-line CGT union called for strikes and organized some 180 marches against the changes, unveiled last month by Mr. Macron’s government.
Protesters said the reforms will give employers new powers to dismiss them, bypass trade unions and reduce their ability to defend their rights.
18 Egyptians killed
At least 18 Egyptian security personnel were killed in North Sinai when their convoy was ambushed by suspected Islamic State militants, in one of the deadliest attacks on police in the restive area this year.
The force had been en route to the town of El-Arish when an explosives-laden vehicle tried to cut it off, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. The car blew up as the sides exchanged fire, the ministry said. Five other members of the security detachment and four ambulance service personnel were wounded, the state-run Al-Ahram reported Tuesday. The emergency service workers were injured when the gunmen attempted to prevent them from responding to the scene.
The Al Jazeera news channel reported that the Islamic State’s local affiliate claimed responsibility.