Reuters World News Summary

Following is a summary of current world news briefs. Hong Kong legislature surrounded by riot police ahead of expected protests

Hundreds of riot police took up posts around Hong Kong's legislature overnight, as protests were expected on Wednesday over a bill criminalising disrespect of China's national anthem and against plans by Beijing to impose national security laws. The proposed new national security laws have triggered the first big street unrest in Hong Kong since last year, when violent protests posed Hong Kong's biggest crisis since the return of Chinese rule in 1997 from Britain. Trump says wants full Afghanistan pullout but hasn't set target date

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday renewed his desire for a full military withdrawal from Afghanistan but added that he had not set a target date, amid speculation he might make ending America's longest war part of his re-election campaign. "We're there 19 years and, yeah, I think that's enough... We can always go back if we want to," Trump told a White House news conference. WHO says the Americas are new COVID-19 epicenter as deaths surge in Latin America

The Americas have emerged as the new epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a Tuesday briefing, as a U.S. study forecast deaths surging in Brazil and other Latin American countries through August. "Now is not the time for countries to ease restrictions," Carissa Etienne, WHO director for the Americas and head of the Pan American Health Organization, said via videoconference. Brazilian nurse with COVID-19 reunited with her baby after giving birth on ventilator

Brazilian nurse Rusia Goes gave birth while unconscious and breathing through a ventilator tube in April as she battled severe COVID-19 symptoms. It would be nearly a month before the 42-year-old was reunited with her newborn daughter. Trump to announce strong Hong Kong response this week

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday the United States was working on a strong response to China's planned national security legislation for Hong Kong and it would be announced before the end of the week China's parliament is expected to approve a proposed security law that would reduce Hong Kong's separate legal status on Thursday, calling into question the special economic status the territory currently enjoys under U.S. law. Mexican coronavirus probe finds dozens of unlicensed retirement homes

Officials have discovered dozens of unlicensed retirement homes in northern Mexico, raising fears that so far undetected coronavirus clusters may emerge in the thinly regulated sector. After outbreaks in three registered private facilities in the state of Nuevo Leon sent the health department scrambling to investigate the industry, it shuttered 40 unregistered homes in and around the city of Monterrey. Defying pandemic, gay couples hold first marriages in Costa Rica

Marco Castillo and his boyfriend, Rodrigo Campos, waited just a few hours to take advantage of a new law in Costa Rica that made the country the first in Central America to allow same-sex marriage. A judge, two witnesses, relatives and hundreds of online viewers joined activist lawyer Castillo and Campos at the Tuesday morning ceremony, which went ahead despite difficulties caused by social distancing restrictions in the coronavirus pandemic. In morgues and shipping containers, Ecuadorians search for lost dead

Dolores Centeno has scoured the morgues and cemeteries of Guayaquil, Ecuador's largest city, for two months searching for her father's body. Now, in a desperate last attempt to find him, she hopes to catch a glimpse of a scar on his chest that would set him apart from the dozens of other decomposing corpses in a newly-filled shipping container. Suspected Islamist militia kills at least 17 in northeastern Congo

Suspected Islamist fighters killed at least 17 people in an early morning raid on a village in northeastern Congo on Monday, a local civil society leader and a monitoring organisation said, the latest attack in a recent surge in violence. At around 5 a.m. local time the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), who claim a loose affiliation with the Islamic State group, attacked the village of Makutano in Ituri province, around 100 km southwest of the city of Bunia, said Gili Gotabo, a civil society leader in Irumu territory. Canada province promises justice after nursing home patients left in dirty diapers

Canada's most populous province on Tuesday promised justice after soldiers helping manage the coronavirus outbreak in nursing homes saw staff leaving people in soiled diapers and ignoring calls for help. Nursing homes account for around 80% of all deaths attributed to the new coronavirus in Canada. The situation is dire in Ontario and neighboring Quebec, where around 1,400 soldiers are working.

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