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Xinhua world news summary at 1530 GMT, June 24

Xinhua, June 24, 2015 Adjust font size:

About 30,000 protesters on Wednesday surrounded Japan's Diet building to express their strong opposition against Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's efforts to push for a series of security-related bills and the extension of Diet session.

The current Diet session is scheduled to end Wednesday, however, in a bid to enact the controversial security bills, Abe and Komeito leader Natsuo Yamaguchi decided Monday to extend it by 95 days to Sept. 27, the longest extension in postwar history. (Japan-Protest)

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ANKARA -- Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu confirmed on Wednesday it was holding meetings with Israel to resume reconciliation talks to restore the deteriorated bilateral ties, local Hurriyet Daily News reported.

"Talks between Turkey and Israel are very normal for the sake of the normalization of relations. How can reconciliation be achieved without holding any meetings?" Cavusoglu told reporters in the Turkish capital of Ankara. (Turkey-Israel-Talks)

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MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Wednesday that Russian anti-sanction measures against Western countries would be extended for one year.

"We are prolonging our response measures by one year, beginning from today (Wednesday)," Putin said at a government meeting.

"The prime minister (Dmitry Medvedev) wrote a letter to me asking to prolong the countermeasures we took to the anti-Russian sanctions imposed by some countries," Putin said. (Russia-Sanction)

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PARIS -- French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius summoned the U.S. ambassador to France Wednesday to explain a WikiLeaks document concerning the United States' spying on three French leaders, including President Francois Hollande, news channel BFMTV reported.

Fabius is scheduled to meet Jane Hartley later in the day to ask for an explanation on "Espionage Elysee," a collection of top-secret intelligence reports and technical documents from the NSA concerning intelligence interceptions of the communications of high-level officials, including Hollande, ex-presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac, between at least 2006 and 2012. (France-U.S.-Espionage) Endi