News of the day from around the world
1 Deadly train crash: A commuter train slammed into a passenger minibus Sunday at a railroad crossing in Indonesia’s capital of Jakarta, killing at least 18 people and seriously injuring six others.
The bus driver allegedly ignored warning signals when he crossed the rail tracks and was rammed by the train in western Jakarta, said Wirdhanto, the police chief in the neighborhood of Tambora.
The top security officials from India and Pakistan held talks Sunday in Thailand’s capital of Bangkok, signaling a resumption of the rival countries’ on-again, off-again peace dialogue.
The South Asian neighbors’ national security advisers discussed issues including peace and security, terrorism, the disputed region of Kashmir and ways to maintain peace along the countries’ shared border, according to a joint statement issued in New Delhi and Islamabad.
Since independence from Britain in 1947, India and Pakistan have fought three wars, two of them over Kashmir.
Britain’s army helped people evacuate from their homes Sunday as stormy weather left parts of the country severely flooded.
Police said Sunday that a sniffer dog discovered 16 Iraqi men, aged between 15 and 32, and a 25-year-old Syrian woman Saturday night following a tip from the ferry operator.
The truck’s Polish driver was arrested on suspicion of human smuggling.
5 Unruly passenger arrested: A man aboard a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Belgrade was arrested Sunday after threatening to open a plane door during the flight, Serbian authorities said.
Lufthansa said the cabin crew and passengers on Flight 1406 managed to restrain him for the rest of the journey, adding that the plane doors can’t be opened during a flight.
Fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists has significantly diminished since September, after killing some 8,000 people since April 2014, but tensions remain high because of unresolved questions about the final political status of the rebel regions in the east.
[...] Western attention has turned largely toward the fight against Islamic extremism in Syria and Iraq.