CHINA’s military is appealing to the younger generation with a slick new recruitment video featuring aircraft carriers, tanks and special forces troops, all set to a rousing rap-rock soundtrack. With lyrics such as “just waiting for the order to kill, kill, kill,” the video appears aimed at millennials brought up on first-person shooter video games such as “Call of Duty.”
CHINA-AUSTRALIA Australia’s treasurer says his government will never sell Australia’s largest cattle empire to foreigners. Chinese-based Dakang Australia Holdings withdrew its application to buy an 80 percent stake in Australia’s largest private landholding, S. Kidman & Co. Ltd.
INDONESIA Several passengers aboard an Etihad Airways flight were injured yesterday when their plane ran into sudden turbulence as it prepared to land in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.
SYRIA An international coalition leading the military campaign against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq agreed to accelerate their contributions but did not publicly specify what those would be. The group also called on Iraqi leaders to reconcile political differences.
SYRIA Secretary of State John Kerry warns Syria’s government that it faces an August deadline for starting a political transition to move President Bashar Assad out.
KENYA police say they have disrupted a cell of extremist medics linked to the Islamic State who are suspected of plotting an anthrax attack.
HONDURAS Court records show the Honduran government and a development company repeatedly sought to tar slain environmental activist Berta Caceres and her colleagues as violent anarchists for their protests against a hydroelectric project on indigenous lands.
EUROZONE As winter turned to spring, the eurozone economy appears to have lost some of the momentum that saw it grow faster than the U.S. in the first quarter of the year. A brace of economic indicators yesterday showed business activity moderated in the past couple of months. Eurostat said retail sales across the 19-country single currency bloc fell by 0.5 percent during March.
CANADA A raging wildfire emptied Canada’s main oil sands city, destroying entire neighborhoods of Fort McMurray, Alberta, where officials warned yesterday that all efforts to suppress the fire have failed.
USA The Connecticut woman who underwent a face transplant five years ago after being attacked by a chimpanzee is back in a Boston hospital after doctors discovered her body is rejecting the transplant.
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