MADRID: Hundreds of doctors took to the streets on Wednesday in their campaign for higher wages and improved working conditions in the Spanish capital.

Around 700 protesters marched to the regional government headquarters in Puerta del Sol Square to demand a wage increase that keeps pace with the soaring cost of living as well as a reduction from the current 37.5 hour week. 

REFUGEES: The death toll from Italy’s migration tragedy reached 65 yesterday, as prosecutors identified suspected smugglers who allegedly charged €8,000 for each person making the “voyage of death” from Turkey to Italy.

Authorities delayed a planned viewing of the coffins to allow more time for identification of the bodies, as desperate relatives and friends arrived in the Calabrian city of Crotone in the hope of finding their loved ones.

GERMANY: Germany’s foreign and development ministers on Wednesday presented new feminist foreign policy guidelines aimed at ensuring all people “have the same right to representation and access to resources.”

The government policy focuses on considering and supporting the needs of women and girls in foreign affairs decisions, with a goal of erasing discrimination and thereby promoting more stable societies, the ministers said.

SOUTH SUDAN: The United Nations on Wednesday condemned the deployment of South Sudanese troops in an area of the disputed region of Abyei, which both Sudan and South Sudan claim.

The UN peacekeeping mission in the contested region warned that the deployment of troops in the southern part of Abyei would create “untold suffering and humanitarian concerns” for civilians in the area.