NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
_1 Cambodia elections: Cambodia’s opposition claimed a strong showing in local elections Sunday, gains that could shake Prime Minister Hun Sen’s longtime grip on power. Opposition party spokesman Yim Sovann said his Cambodia National Rescue Party won about 500 communes out of the country’s 1,646. He said his party received 46 percent of the vote, up from 30 percent in the last local elections in 2012, while the ruling party got 51 percent, down from 62 percent. Hun Sen had warned of civil war if his Cambodian People’s Party loses the majority in city and village councils to the opposition. Official results will be announced June 25.
_2 Afghanistan protests: Hundreds of people continued to protest Sunday near the site of a deadly bomb blast in Kabul, demanding greater security and the ousting of the U.S.-backed government of President Ashraf Ghani. Protesters gathered near the crater where a huge truck bomb killed nearly 100 people Wednesday. About 500 protesters also rallied for change in the western city of Herat. The capital of Kabul remains tense after antigovernment demonstrations Friday and a gruesome triple suicide bombing that killed 20 Saturday. Protesters said they are angry the government cannot keep the country safe. Security experts say that if the protests grow, they could weaken Ghani’s fragile coalition government, already under pressure by the Taliban insurgency and militants linked to the Islamic State.
_3 Iraq fighting: A senior leader with a government-sanctioned paramilitary force said Sunday that his troops captured a key town west of the city of Mosul from the Islamic State group. The deputy gead of popular mobilization forces, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, said troops entered the center of strategic Baaj early Sunday. Al-Muhandis said the advance is a “big and qualitative achievement” in the U.S.-backed operation to retake Mosul. The town near the Syrian border is considered one of the important supply lines for the Islamic State.
_4 Venezuela unrest: United Airlines will suspend flights to Venezuela next month, a move that further cuts off access to the Latin American nation engulfed in violent political protests and economic chaos. The daily service between Houston and Caracas will be canceled because of low demand, said United spokesman Charles Hobart. “Because our Houston-Caracas service is not meeting our financial expectations, we have decided to suspend it, effective July 1,” he said. The Venezuelan government has faced almost two months of widespread government protests. _5 Bahrain crackdown: Bahrain shut down a prominent independent newspaper Sunday “until further notice” over an article about unrest in Morocco, the latest move tightening expression in the gulf nation as authorities wage a crackdown on dissent. The closure of the daily Al-Wasat marks the third time authorities have ordered it to stop publishing a print edition since the island’s 2011 Arab Spring protests and comes just after officials briefly banned it in January from publishing online. Bahrain’s Information Affairs Authority said in a statement that the closure came over a story “affecting the relations of the kingdom of Bahrain with other countries.” For more than a year now, Bahrain’s Sunni-ruled government has arrested or forced activists into exile while breaking up major opposition political parties in the Shiite-majority nation. Brian Dooley, a senior adviser at Human Rights First, called the decision to halt the publication of Al-Wasat “a panic move from the authorities scared of facts.”