Reuters World News Summary

Following is a summary of current world news briefs. Algeria's Bouteflika offers to leave within one year if re-elected: Ennahar TV

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, facing mass protests over his 20 years in power, will run in April's elections, his campaign manager said on Sunday, with Ennahar TV saying he had offered to step down after a year if re-elected. The announcement read out by Abdelghani Zaalane on Bouteflika's behalf said the president pledged to organize an early election, with Ennahar TV saying that would be held within a year. India-Pakistan border quiet but Kashmir tense amid militancy crackdown

As India and Pakistan seemingly dial down hostilities that brought the arch enemies to the brink of another war, a massive crackdown on militancy in the Indian-controlled Kashmir region is killing both militants and security personnel in big numbers. At the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border between the nuclear-armed neighbors, there was relative calm in the past 24 hours, their armies said on Sunday. The exchange of fire in the past few days has killed seven people on the Pakistani side and four on the Indian side, though the release of a downed Indian fighter pilot by Pakistan on Friday night has helped de-escalate tensions. Estonian center-right opposition wins parliamentary election

Estonia's center-right opposition Reform party emerged the biggest party in the country's parliamentary elections on Sunday, placing its leader, Kaja Kallas, in the pole position to become the country's first female prime minister. The pro-business Reform party won 28.8 percent of votes, the official results from the State Electoral Office showed. Prime Minister Juri Ratas' center-left Centre party won 23.0 percent and the far-right EKRE 17.8 percent, the results showed. Islamic State deploys car bombs in defense of last enclave

Islamic State unleashed car bombs against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) assaulting Baghouz, in a last-ditch effort to stave off defeat in its final patch of territory, fighters from the U.S.-backed force said on Sunday. Capturing the besieged village in eastern Syria will be a milestone in international efforts to roll back the jihadists, whose self-styled "caliphate" covered roughly a third of Syria and Iraq at its height in 2014. Germany to strip IS fighters of citizenship under certain criteria: report

Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and their Social Democrat (SPD) coalition partners have agreed a plan to strip some Germans who fight for the Islamic State militant group of their citizenship, a German newspaper reported on Sunday. More than 1,000 Germans have left their country for war zones in the Middle East since 2013 and the government has been debating how to deal with them as U.S.-backed forces are poised to take the last patch of territory from Islamic State in Syria. Trump says big U.S. savings in curbing joint South Korea military drills

President Donald Trump said on Sunday the reason he wanted to curb military drills with South Korea was to save the United States hundreds of millions of dollars in costs, and suggested it could also reduce tensions with North Korea. "That was my position long before I became President," Trump tweeted days after he and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un failed to reach a denuclearization agreement at a summit in Vietnam. The Pentagon and the South Korean military confirmed on Saturday that they were ending large-scale joint spring exercises. Ostrich jacket, fake rallies, therapy dogs and other odd scenes in Trump-Russia probe

Question: What do you get when you combine Russian agents, a therapy dog and a $15,000 ostrich-skin jacket? Answer: A criminal investigation that could decide the fate of a U.S. president. UK's Cox scraps bid for Irish backstop time-limit, exit clause: Telegraph

U.K. Attorney General Geoffrey Cox has abandoned attempts to secure a hard time-limit or unilateral exit mechanism for the Irish backstop, the Telegraph reported on Sunday. Ministers said Cox's aims that represent central demands of Euroskeptics are considered too "blunt" and have been rejected by the European Union, the newspaper https://bit.ly/2NFVsNN reported. British PM May promises 1.6 billion pound fund for Brexit-backing towns

British Prime Minister Theresa May will on Monday set out plans for a 1.6 billion pound ($2.11 billion) fund to help to boost economic growth in Brexit-supporting communities, particularly in the north of England. The "Stronger Towns Fund", details of which appeared in newspapers last month, is seen by many as part of May's efforts to win support for her Brexit deal from opposition Labour lawmakers who represent areas that voted strongly in favor of leaving the European Union. North Korea has no economic future if it has nuclear weapons: Trump

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that North Korea does not have any economic future with nuclear weapons as the Pentagon confirmed the United States and South Korea had agreed to end joint large scale spring military exercises. "North Korea has an incredible, brilliant economic future if they make a deal, but they don't have any economic future if they have nuclear weapons," Trump said at a Conservative Political Action Conference.