World Briefs

CHINA cuts interest rates on loans by small lenders that finance the country’s entrepreneurs in a new move to shore up lackluster economic growth. Yesterday, the People’s Bank of China cut the rate on a one-week loan by small banks and credit cooperatives from 5.5 percent to 3.25 percent. The rate for an overnight loan was cut from 4.5 percent to 2.75 percent.

JAPAN racked up a trade surplus last month as exports of cars, computers and other goods grew, while imports dipped on falling oil prices.

MALAYSIA-USA Malaysia and the U.S. sign an agreement to boost cooperation to fight terrorism, as a minister voices concerns that deadly attacks in Paris could spark copycats in the region.

PAKISTAN  Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif asks the country’s president to reject a petition for pardon for four suspected militants sentenced to death over the Peshawar school attack last December that killed 150 people, mostly children.

AFGHANISTAN  An Afghan official says a suicide car bombing targeting a government compound killed one soldier and wounded four others.

NEPAL Doctors in Nepal say shortages of life-saving medicines because of political protests that have blocked key roads could lead to a crisis as hospitals are starting to cut services.

INDIA’s film censors order kissing scenes be cut in the latest James Bond movie, “Spectre,” before it is released in the country.

ISRAEL A pair of attacks by Palestinians, including a stabbing at an office building in Tel Aviv, killed five people yesterday, intensifying a two month-long wave of violence.

UK British police have arrested a Libyan man in his 50s on suspicion of conspiracy to murder in the 1984 killing of London policewoman Yvonne Fletcher. They said it is “the first significant arrest” in the investigation into the killing of the 25-year-old policewoman more than 30 years ago.

MACEDONIA  The U.N. refugee agency says three Balkan countries have shut their borders for migrants from states that are not directly engulfed in wars. UNHCR spokeswoman in Serbia Melita Sunjic said yesterday the border regimes were changed overnight. She says Macedonia is not allowing the entrance from Greece for people from Morocco, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Liberia, Congo and Pakistan. On the Serbian border with Macedonia, the Serbs are allowing in only migrants from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. On the Croatia-Serbia border, Croats are allowing in only from these three countries, plus Palestine.

EGYPT’s president said yesterday that his country has taken many steps to boost security at ports of entry following the Oct. 31 crash of a Russian airliner and vowed to not stop until all security loopholes are closed.