Top News

Exclusive: Shi’ite Muslim paramilitaries that helped Iraqi forces drive the Sunni IS out of its last strongholds in Iraq have taken control of the thriving trade in scrap metal retrieved from the battlefield, according to scrap dealers and others familiar with the trade. They are taking scrap metal from devastated areas to turn a profit and lawmakers partly blame their business for the slow pace of rebuilding.

News of the conviction of Mexico’s legendary crime boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman traveled quickly to his home state, where people said they felt pain for a man some described as a fallen folk hero and community benefactor. Reaction in his native state of Sinaloa, home to remote mountain villages and sunny beaches along Mexico’s Pacific coast, ranged from lament to resignation that little will change now that Guzman is likely to spend the rest of his life behind bars. “Trafficking drugs will continue,” said Gildardo Velazquez in Cuiliacan, the state’s humid capital.

Politics

Congress faced a tight deadline to pass a bipartisan accord to avert another U.S. government shutdown as news outlets reported President Trump planned to sign the deal as he eyes other ways to fund his wall without lawmakers.

In his first State of the State address since taking office, California Governor Gavin Newsom took several swipes at President Trump, calling the Republican’s immigration policies “political theater” based on misrepresentations. In a wide-ranging speech, Newsom said he would scale back massive water and rail projects pushed by his predecessor and had assembled a team of lawyers to protect wildfire victims and ratepayers as utility PG&E enters bankruptcy proceedings.

A new survey of military families living on U.S. bases found most are dissatisfied with their housing, often citing serious health and safety hazards – results that counter years of Pentagon reports claiming soaring satisfaction rates among military housing tenants. Read the series: Ambushed at Home.

World

China said a newspaper report that Chinese diplomats had held talks with Venezuela’s political opposition to protect its investments in the Latin American country was “fake news”.

Two men in their 70s are contesting a Nigerian presidential election in which half the registered voters are aged between 18 and 35. Both are familiar faces. It is the fifth election campaign for President Muhammadu Buhari, 76, who was a military ruler in the 1980s, and the fourth for main opposition candidate Atiku Abubakar, 72, who was vice president from 1999 to 2007. The story behind the election in Africa’s biggest democracy can be told in numbers.

Australia will reopen a controversial detention center for asylum seekers, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said after an embarrassing defeat in parliament that allows migrants in offshore camps to receive medical care in the country.

Indonesia’s communications ministry said that Instagram had taken down an account displaying comic strips depicting the struggles faced by gay Muslim men after authorities labeled it “pornographic”.

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.@Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have been imprisoned in Myanmar for 429 days. Follow updates on the case: reut.rs/2DubgOM

6:28 AM - 13 Feb 2019