NEWS OF THE DAY
Greece floods: Greece’s fire service says rescue teams recovered the body of a man who was reported missing after flash floods inundated the outskirts of Athens, bringing the death toll from the flooding to 16. The man’s body was found Thursday in the basement of a home in Nea Peramos, a coastal area west of Athens. Rescue crews are continuing to search for four other people reported missing. The flash floods devastated the western fringes of the Greek capital on Wednesday, turning streets into torrents of mud and debris that swept away cars, collapsed walls and submerged parts of a major highway.
Kurdish boycott ends: Iraq’s Kurdish lawmakers ended their boycott of the national parliament on Thursday in an apparent concession to Baghdad after a prolonged military and political standoff following the controversial Kurdish independence vote in September. They had boycotted the parliament since it voted to declare the Kurdish independence referendum unconstitutional. The end of the boycott comes on the heels of a decision from the Kurdish regional government this week to accept an earlier federal court ruling that Iraq must remain unified. Iraqi forces led by Baghdad and the Kurdish peshmerga fighters have engaged in a military standoff since Baghdad retook the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and several other disputed territories from peshmerga’s control last month.
Sinai raid: Egypt’s armed forces said Thursday that they have killed three “high-level” suspected militants and arrested 74 others in sweeps in the troubled northern Sinai Peninsula in recent days. Five four-wheel-drive vehicles and four bombmaking workshops were destroyed in the raids, as well as ammunition and fuel stocks, military spokesman Col. Tamer el-Rifai said. Security forces have been battling militants in northern Sinai for years in an insurgency that picked up after the 2013 military ouster of an elected but divisive Islamist president.
No Israelis: A German court ruled Thursday that Kuwait’s national airline didn’t have to transport an Israeli citizen because the carrier would face legal repercussions at home if it did. The Frankfurt state court noted in its decision that Kuwait Airways is not allowed to have contracts with Israelis under Kuwaiti law because of the Middle Eastern country’s boycott of Israel. The court said it didn’t evaluate whether “this law make sense,” but that the airline risked repercussions that were “not reasonable” for violating it, such as fines or prison time for employees. An Israeli citizen, who was identified in court papers as Adar M., a student living in Germany, sued Kuwait Airways after it canceled his booking for a flight from Frankfurt to Bangkok that included a stopover in Kuwait City.
Old Vic allegations: Directors of the Old Vic theater in London said Thursday that a “cult of personality” around Kevin Spacey prevented junior staff and young actors from speaking out against the American movie star, who now stands accused of inappropriate behavior in a string of alleged incidents over a decade at the artistic institution. The Old Vic trustees said the theater’s investigators had heard from 20 people who accused Spacey of a range of “inappropriate behaviors” during his 11-year run as artistic director of the renowned playhouse. Spacey’s transgressions are alleged to have ranged from “making people feel uncomfortable to sexually inappropriate behavior,” the BBC reported.