News of the Day from Around the Globe

Matthew Rycroft told reporters Wednesday that the U.N. special envoy for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, has been meeting government and Houthi Shiite rebel leaders and “preparing assiduously” for the talks.

Rycroft says the Security Council is united and is urging all parties to enter the new talks “without preconditions,” and to send delegations empowered to make decisions.

Syria’s state-run new agency says rebel shelling of Damascus has killed two women and wounded 26 people, including 16 students.

The SANA news agency says rebel groups based in an eastern suburb shelled several areas there on Wednesday, including a college that specializes in religious and Arabic studies.

Iran worked in the past on nuclear weapons but its activities didn’t go past planning such a program and testing of basic components, the U.N. atomic agency said Wednesday, in what it described as a final report wrapping up nearly a decade of probing the suspicions.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s report was significant in coming down on the side of allegations by the U.S. and other nations critical of Iran’s nuclear program that Tehran engaged in trying to make such arms.

Japan’s government has violated the rights of Okinawa’s residents for decades by allowing a heavy presence of U.S. troops on the tiny southern island, Okinawa’s governor told a court hearing Wednesday, the start of a legal battle over plans to relocate a U.S. air base.

The dispute over the base escalated into a legal battle after Japan’s government filed a lawsuit against Okinawan Gov. Takeshi Onaga, seeking to overturn his cancellation of a local approval for land reclamation needed for the base’s relocation.