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Xinhua world news summary at 1530 GMT, Aug. 4

Xinhua, August 4, 2015 Adjust font size:

Russia has submitted to the United Nations a revised application to expand its Arctic zone, the country's Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

Russia claims the territories over 350 nautical miles off the Arctic Ocean coastline, which covers about 1.2 million square kilometers of the continental shelf, the ministry said in a statement. (Russia-UN-Arctic Zone)

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BAGHDAD -- A total of 14 people were killed on Tuesday in clashes with Islamic State (IS) militants and air strikes in the Iraqi provinces of Anbar and Salahudin, provincial security sources said.

In the early hours of the day, fierce clashes erupted between dozens of IS militants and security forces backed by allied militias known as Hashd Shaabi, or popular mobilization, in the areas of Sidiqiyah and Tal Msheihda in east of the provincial capital city of Ramadi, some 110 km west of Baghdad, a provincial security source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. (Iraq-IS-Clashes)

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LAGOS -- Some Boko Haram elements have approached the Nigerian government through a non governmental organization for dialogue as a way of ending the seeming intractable insurgency in parts of the country, a crisis official said on Tuesday.

Retired Air Commodore Yusuf Anas, the Executive Secretary of Center for Crisis Communication (CCC) told a news conference in Abuja, the nation's capital city that he and his team were already in the process of facilitating a meeting with relevant government agencies. (Nigeria-Boko Haram-Dialogue)

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BRUSSELS -- The European Union (EU) and Vietnam have reached an agreement in principle for a free trade agreement (FTA), after two and a half years of intense negotiations, the European Commission announced Tuesday.

The agreement will remove nearly all tariffs on goods traded between the two economies, it said. (EU-Vietnam-FTA)

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Saint-Denis, La Reunion -- A piece of plastic debris was found Tuesday in the northern coast of French overseas Island La Reunion, where a wreckage suspected to be part of the missing MH370 was washed up last Wednesday, according to local media.

Local police arrived at the beach east of Saint-Denis and carried the item away. (Reunion-MH370-Debris)

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MOSCOW -- Russia has expelled a senior Swedish diplomat here in retaliation for the expulsion of a Russian diplomat in Stockholm, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

"The Foreign Ministry has declared an employee of the Swedish Embassy in Moscow a non-grata person," the ministry said in an online statement.(Russia-Swedish Diplomat)

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LONDON -- Britain will extend its air strikes against Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq by an extra year, British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said Tuesday.

Fallon announced that the frontline RAF Tornado squadron spearheading Britain's air campaign against IS in Iraq will be maintained in service for an additional year until March 2017, according to the British Ministry of Defense. (Britain-IS-Airstrikes) Endi