World Briefs

CHINA The reprieved death sentence of former railways minister Liu Zhijun was commuted yesterday to life in prison by the Beijing  Higher People’s Court. The Second Intermediate People’s Court of Beijing sentenced Liu to death with a two-year reprieve in July 2013 for bribery and abuse of power. Liu has been incarcerated in Qincheng Prison since August 2013. The penitentiary last month proposed that his sentence be commuted to life in prison for good behavior during the two-year period.

CHINA-SWITZERLAND The World Intellectual Property Organization says China cranked out patent applications at a record pace last year. Its total of just under a million outstripped the U.S. and Japan combined. WIPO Director-General Francis Gurry marveled at China’s “extraordinary” numbers. The Geneva-based body stopped short of drawing firm conclusions about China’s 12.5 percent increase from 2013, to 928,000 patents.

AUSTRALIA An Australian court yesterday ordered Nurofen’s owner to stop selling several versions of the popular painkiller that were identical to its standard ibuprofen pills but nearly twice as expensive.

PHILIPPINES Thousands of residents have been evacuated as Typhoon Melor slammed into the eastern Philippines, where flood- and landslide-prone communities are bracing for destructive winds, heavy rains and waves up to 4 meters tall.

TURKEY withdrew some of its soldiers stationed at a camp in Iraq as part of a “rearrangement” of its troops, the country’s state-run news agency reported yesterday, days after Iraq demanded that Turkish troops immediately pull out from Iraqi territory.

SAUDI ARABIA  Voters elected 20 women for local government seats, according to results released to The Associated Press, a day after women voted and ran in elections for the first time in the country’s history.

YEMEN Security officials say heavy fighting is underway between the country’s internationally recognized government and Shiite rebels, hours ahead of the start of an agreed-on, weeklong truce. The officials say there are clashes in Yemen’s southern, central and western provinces despite the agreement by the warring factions to lay down their weapons at five minutes to midnight yesterday — the eve of planned peace talks in Geneva.

ARGENTINA  At least 41 police officers were killed yesterday when a bus in a convoy in northern Argentina went off the side of a bridge and fell 20 meters. The bus was one of three carrying police near Salta, a city about 1,500 kilometers north of Buenos Aires.

SWEDEN A Swedish court has convicted two Swedish men of terror crimes in connection with killings in Syria in 2013 and handed them life sentences.

ISRAELI police say a Palestinian driver rammed into pedestrians near the western entrance to Jerusalem, wounding nine people before he was killed.