KENYA Brushing aside concerns for his security, Pope Francis arrived in Kenya yesterday for his first-ever visit to Africa, including Uganda and Central African Republic, a country torn by fighting between Christian and Muslims, marking the first time a pope has flown into an active armed conflict.
S KOREA-USA A new nuclear treaty with the United States governing South Korea’s commercial nuclear activities during the next 20 years goes into effect. The treaty opens the possibility of South Korea gaining the ability to enrich uranium to produce non-weapons-grade nuclear fuel depending on future negotiations with the United States.
MALAYSIA A third ship will join the deep sea hunt for a missing Malaysian airliner as the 13-month-old search of a huge expanse of the Indian Ocean ramps up during the southern hemisphere summer.
AFGHANISTAN Moldova’s interior minister says three citizens were on a helicopter ambushed by Taliban insurgents in northwestern Afghanistan.
JAPAN should be doing more to help with the global catastrophe of asylum seekers, the head of the U.N. refugee body says.
AUSTRALIA Officials say at least two people have been killed and several others injured by huge wildfires that also destroyed homes near the southern Australian city of Adelaide and continue to burn out of control.
BELGIUM After a four-day shutdown prompted by a threat alert across Brussels, schools are reopening their doors with the help of beefed up security, including police armed with machine guns. Though the Belgian capital continues to be under the highest-level threat alert, meaning that an attack is serious and imminent, schools and subways began reopening across the city yesterday.
UK Britain’s Treasury chief abandoned controversial cuts in tax credits for the working poor and refrained from slashing funding to the police yesterday as he updated Parliament on the government’s tax and spending plans. George Osborne said improvements in public finances made it possible to back away from the unpopular credit cuts his government had proposed earlier.
RUSSIA-UKRAINE Tensions between Russia and Ukraine escalated further yesterday as Ukraine decided to stop buying Russian natural gas — hoping to rely on supplies from other countries — and closed its airspace to its eastern neighbor.
TUNISIA Authorities said yesterday they have discovered a 13th body in the bus attacked Tuesday in central Tunis. The body is believed to be the “terrorist who caused the explosion,” the Interior Ministry said. The attack on the bus carrying Tunisia’s presidential guards involved about 10 kilograms of military explosives, the ministry added.
QATAR A year’s worth of rain deluged parts of Qatar yesterday as seasonal storms moving through Saudi Arabia flooded streets in a city northwest of the capital, Riyadh.
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