World Briefs

CHINA Authorities in the Chinese city of Tianjin are moving 10 chemical plants found to be too close to residential areas, six months after a devastating chemical accident killed 173 people.

CHINA Zimbabwe raised USD1 million from the sale of elephants to China and will continue exporting to the Asian country as part of conservation efforts, wildlife authorities said. “We exported 24 elephants last year to China and we know that only one died,” the Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Authority stated yesterday.

NORTH KOREAN leader Kim Jong Un praises scientists involved in the country’s recent rocket launch that he said struck a “telling blow” to enemies. He ordered them to press ahead with more launches, state media reported yesterday.

AUSTRALIA Law enforcement agencies have seized methylamphetamine worth 1.26 billion Australian dollars (USD900 million) in the country’s largest ever haul of the illicit drug in its liquid form.

JAPAN’s economy contracted at a worse than expected 1.4 percent annual pace last quarter as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s lavish stimulus policies failed to counter anemic consumer demand and sluggish exports.

USA Justice Antonin Scalia’s death deprives conservatives of a key vote that could change the outcome in some key Supreme Court cases, including one in which labor unions appeared headed for a big defeat. The 2016 presidential campaign just got real.

MEXICO Pope Francis condemns the drug trade’s “dealers of death” and urges Mexicans to shun the devil’s lust for money as he leads a huge open-air Mass for more than 300,000 people in Ecatepec, a violence-riddled city. Today Francis is celebrating Mexican Indians with a visit to heavily indigenous Chiapas state.

UK-EU British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond says there will be “very big issues” still on the table at a European Union summit this week as leaders try to thrash out a deal to keep Britain in the 28-nation bloc. Hammond said that “there are lots of things still being discussed” about reforms the EU might undertake to satisfy the government in London.

SYRIA Turkey shells positions held by a U.S.-backed Kurdish militia in northern Syria for a second day, drawing condemnation from the Syrian government, whose forces are advancing against insurgents in the same area under the cover of Russian airstrikes.

AFGHANISTAN Young Afghans are increasingly finding love on social media, which allows them to circumvent the strict segregation of the sexes in their deeply conservative society.