In Brief: 60 percent of Syria’s toxic chemicals neutralized, U.S. says

UNITED NATIONS – The United States says it has neutralized about 60 percent of Syria’s most toxic chemicals.

British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, the president of the U.N. Security Council, said the United States made the report after a videoconference briefing to the council Tuesday by Sigrid Kaag, who leads the international effort to rid Syria of its chemical weapons.

He said Kaag reported that methods to destroy the 12 chemical production facilities that Syria declared were worked out at a meeting earlier in the day in Beirut.

Lyall Grant says he reported to the closed council meeting that Britain will complete its destruction of Syrian chemical precursors intended for the production of chemical weapons and hydrochloric acid “in the course of this week.”

Attorney: Prisoner needs medical exam

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – A Guantanamo Bay prisoner from Syria cleared for release in 2009 has seen his health deteriorate amid a hunger strike and needs urgent, independent medical examination, his attorney said Tuesday.

Abu Wa’el Dhiab, 43, has been on a hunger strike since February 2013, with only a brief interruption earlier this year when he thought he was going home, said Cori Crider, a lawyer who is a director for the British legal rights group Reprieve.

Crider has filed a request seeking an independent medical evaluation for Dhiab and said she expects a judge to respond this week.

“He is just withering as a human being,” Crider said in a phone interview from London, adding that she became concerned after meeting with him last week. “He was a skeleton. … He’s just lying flat on the ground because he doesn’t have the strength.”

The U.S. military has said it uses humane methods to keep hunger-striking prisoners alive, but a federal judge recently ordered officials to review Dhiab’s case after he complained.

Dhiab is one of six prisoners whom the U.S. government has agreed to resettle in the South American country of Uruguay. It is unclear when exactly the transfer would take place.

Dhiab also is seeking an end to force-feedings and is awaiting a ruling in that case, Crider said.

Terror suspect alive, captive tells police

MANILA, Philippines – A confidential Philippine police report said a captured Abu Sayyaf commander has told investigators that a top Southeast Asian terror suspect, who the military reported was killed in a U.S.-backed airstrike two years ago, is alive and being harbored by a hardline Muslim rebel group in the south.

The interrogation report, a copy of which was seen by The Associated Press on Wednesday, says Abu Sayyaf commander Khair Mundos acknowledged his group has fallen into disarray and now survives largely on extortion and kidnappings. Mundos was captured by police on June 11.

The report says Mundos told interrogators that he traveled last year to a Muslim rebel camp where here he met Marwan, a top Malaysian terror suspect, who the military reported was killed in a 2012 airstrike.

Japan remembers Hiroshima bombing

TOKYO – Japan is marking the 69th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and Mayor Kazumi Matsui called on U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders to visit the city to see the scars of the atomic bombing first hand.

About 45,000 people attended today’s ceremony in Hiroshima’s peace park near the epicenter of the 1945 attack that killed up to 140,000 people. The bombing of Nagasaki three days later killed another 70,000, prompting Japan’s surrender.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that as the sole country to face nuclear attack, Japan has the duty to seek to eliminate nuclear weapons.

The anniversary comes as Japan is divided over Abe’s recent Cabinet decision to allow the country’s military to defend foreign countries and play greater roles overseas.