IN BRIEF (Page 11)

Turkey

Erdogan vows to 'clean' border

President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that Turkey will "clean" its entire border with Syria in a sign that the Turkish offensive on the Syrian Kurdish YPG group in northern Syria's Afrin region could be extended further. Since Turkey's assault in Afrin started nine days ago, it has increased tensions between Ankara and the United States, which has supported the YPG in other parts of Syria in the fight against the Islamic State group.

United States

Trump sometimes 'tweets from bed'

President Donald Trump, who has garnered a large following on social media with rambunctious postings, said he sometimes tweets from bed, though he occasionally allows others to post his words. Trump frequently uses Twitter to announce policy, assail his adversaries and to tangle with countries over world affairs. The@realDonald-Trump account had 47.2 million users as of Sunday. In an interview with Britain's ITV channel, he appeared to appreciate the wide impact of his postings in Twitter and said that he needed social media to communicate with voters in the era of what he termed fake news.

Poland

Clash over draft Holocaust law

The prime ministers of Israel and Poland decided on Sunday to start talks to reach an agreed wording of a Polish bill that bans mentions of Polish complicity in crimes committed during the Holocaust. The talks may halt an escalating diplomatic crisis between the two countries after the lower house of the Polish parliament voted in favor the controversial bill on Friday, sparking an uproar in Israel. The new legislation proposes to jail a person who blames Poland or the Poles for Nazi crimes against humanity, which were committed in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II. The bill also prohibits phrases such as "Polish death camps".

Sweden

Ikea's founder dies aged 91

Ingvar Kamprad, a farmer's son turned multibillionaire who founded the Ikea empire that revolutionized furnishing, has died aged 91, the firm said on Sunday. Kamprad "passed away peacefully surrounded by his loved ones" at his home in the southern Swedish region of Smaland on Saturday" following a brief illness", Ikea said. Born in 1926 to a farming family in Smaland, Kamprad, whose fortune in 2017 was estimated at $46 billion according to the Swiss economic magazine Bilan, founded the company at the age of 17.

Australia

Joint search for ferry survivors

The US and Australia are due to join the search for survivors from a ferry that sank near the remote Pacific nation of Kiribati after seven people were rescued from a lifeboat, officials said on Monday. A New Zealand military plane used radar to find the wooden dinghy on Sunday, more than a week after a ferry carrying an estimated 50 people between two Kiribati islands disappeared. The survivors told rescuers the ferry sank and they'd drifted for four days on the lifeboat and had no water.

Reuters - Xinhua - Afp - Ap

(China Daily 01/30/2018 page11)