ISRAELI work crews have begun demolishing dozens of Palestinian homes in an east Jerusalem neighbourhood.

Yesterday’s demolitions cap a years-long legal battle over the buildings, which straddle the city and the occupied West Bank.

Israel says the buildings were built illegally, too close to its West Bank separation barrier. But residents say they have nowhere to build and getting permits to build homes legally is impossible.

Gilad Erdan, Israel’s minister of public security, said the supreme court ruled the illegal construction “constitutes a severe security threat and can provide cover to suicide bombers and other terrorists hiding among civilian population”.

He said that those who built houses along the separation barrier “took the law into their own hands”.

MEANWHILE, India’s space agency says it has launched an unmanned spacecraft to the far side of the moon, a week after aborting the mission due to a technical problem.

Scientists at the mission control centre in Sriharikota, off the Bay of Bengal, burst into applause as the rocket lifted off in clear weather as scheduled.

IN the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte will address a joint session of congress led by his allies as thousands of protesters gather to call for his removal.

Duterte is expected to press his priorities, like reinstating the death penalty and amending the pro-democracy constitution at the state of the nation address at the house of representatives.

ELSEWHERE, a group of protesters targeted China’s liaison office on Sunday night. More than 100,000 people marched through the city to demand democracy and an investigation into the use of force by police to disperse crowds at earlier protests.

During the demonstration, eggs were thrown at its office in Hong Kong.

China has harshly criticised the demonstration, accusing the demonstrators of violence without mentioning an attack against protesters and civilians the same night.

The official People’s Daily newspaper, in a front-page commentary, headlined Central Authority Cannot Be Challenged, called the protesters’ actions “intolerable”.

FINALLY, Yukiya Amano, the Japanese diplomat who led the International Atomic Energy Agency for a decade has died aged 72.

Amano, was involved in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme and the clean-up of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. He had wide experience in disarmament, non-proliferation diplomacy and nuclear energy issues and had been chief of the UN agency that regulates nuclear use worldwide.