Camp Tariq, Iraq: ISIS terrorists fought back vigorously overnight against an onslaught by the Iraqi army on a southern district of the city of Falluja, the group’s bastion near Baghdad, officers said on Tuesday.Soldiers from the elite Rapid Response Team stopped their advance overnight about 500 meters (yards) from the al-Shuhada district, the southeastern part of city’s main built-up area, an army commander and a police officer said.”Our forces came under heavy fire, they are well dug in in trenches and tunnels,” said the commander speaking in Camp Tariq, the rear army base south of Falluja, 50 km (30 miles) west of Baghdad.

A staff member of Falluja’s main hospital said they received reports of 32 civilians killed on Monday. The toll could not be confirmed by a second source.Medical sources in the city had reported that the death toll in the city stood at about 50, 30 civilians and 20 militants, during the first week the offensive which started on May 23.Falluja has been under siege for more than six months. Foreign aid organization are not present in the city, but are providing help to those who manage to exit and reach refugee camps.The latest offensive is causing alarm among these organizations as more than 50,000 civilians remain trapped with limited access to water, food and health care.

Falluja is the second-largest Iraqi city still under control of the militants, after Mosul, their de facto capital in the north that had a pre-war population of about 2 million.Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the assault on Falluja on May 22 after a spate of bombings that killed more than 150 people in one week in Baghdad, the worst death toll so far this year. A series of bombings claimed by ISIS also hit Baghdad on Monday, killing over 20 people.Falluja has been a bastion of the Sunni insurgency that fought both the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the Shia-led Baghdad government that took over after the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, in 2003.It was the first city to fall under ISIS control, in January 2014.

Political turmoil in Brazil refuses to die down as another Cabinet minister in the Michelt Temer-led government resigned on Monday over leaked recordings that imply he was involved in helping cover up the Petrobras scandal. The person is, ironically, Brazil’s Transparency Minister Fabiano Silveira and his job profile requires him to take action against corruption.The Ministry of Transparency officials on Monday stopped Silveira from entering the office building, and resigned en masse in protest against President Temer’s decision to keep Silveira on for the time-being.

“Temer’s initial decision was that Silveira can continue in his post for now because he did not interfere in the investigation, he was just giving [Senate leader Renan Calheiros] Calheiros advice,” a spokesman for Silveira was quoted as saying by Reuters.The recording broadcast by Brazil’s Globo TV was recorded by Sergio Machado, an ex-senator and former head of the transportation arm of Petrobras. Silveira is reportedly heard advising Calheiros on how to respond to Brazilian federal prosecutors regarding the Petrobras investigation. The conversation took place when Silveira was a counsellor on Brazil’s National Justice Counsel that acts as a watchdog over the judiciary, Reuters reported.

Another Cabinet minister, Senator Romero Juca, was forced to resign last week after a recording by Machado was released. Juca is heard negotiating pacts across parties as multiple politicians from various parties are implicated in the Petrobras scandal, to squash the investigation.It has been almost three weeks since Temer took over from suspended president Dilma Rousseff, who was accused of breaking budget laws and his interim government has been facing accusations of attempting to stop the investigation around kickbacks received by politicians. Multiple top executives have turned into approvers for reduced jail terms in the case.

Beijing: China on Tuesday said it will raise its major concerns, including the South China Sea, Tibet and Taiwan issues, with the US during the bilateral annual ‘Strategic and Economic Dialogue’ to be held here next month.China announced on Monday that the dialogue, which will take place on June 6 and 7, will be attended by US Secretary of State John Kerry and other top American officials.China will bring up topics related to its major concerns, including the Taiwan question, Tibet and maritime security and it will respond to the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue which the US is expected to raise, state-run ‘China Daily’ reported, quoting Chinese officials as saying.

The two countries have differing pursuits on major issues at the strategic level. However, the two still have many common interests, the officials said.Whether it is on the South China Sea issue or on the Korean Peninsula issue, the two countries have a shared security goal to maintain regional stability, they said.Ruan Zongze, vice-president of the China Institute of International Studies, said the South China Sea issue will be brought to the table because it has affected the two-way ties, and the US has been “undermining regional stability” while “rebalancing to Asia” in the past two years.

China claims almost all of South China Sea which is disputed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. US have been dispatching its warships into the waters claimed by China to assert freedom of navigation.China has strongly opposed such actions, alleging the US threatens its sovereignty and security, endangers the safety of people and facilities on the reef and harms “regional peace and stability”.Strategic and Economic Dialogue, which started in 2009, has become the highest-level, regular bilateral communication channel for the world’s two largest economies to compare notes on key issues concerning diplomacy, security and economy.

High-level officials from the countries’ education, culture, health, science and technology, women, sports and youth sectors will meet for one day of talks in early June before joining the main talks the next day, Chinese officials said. This is the eighth dialogue and will be the last to be co-chaired by President Barack Obama’s administration.