Word briefs

CHINA’s navy has fired dozens of missiles and torpedoes during exercises in the East China Sea that come amid heightened maritime tensions in the region. The live-fire drills that began Monday follow China’s strident rejection of a ruling last month that invalidated Beijing’s claims to a vast swath of the South China Sea. More on p10

INDIA The death toll in flooding from heavy monsoon rains in India has climbed past 90, with about a million people taking shelter in government-run relief camps, officials said yesterday. Incessant downpours have damaged swaths of land, uprooted trees and snapped telephone cables in dozens of districts in the states of Bihar in the east, Assam in the remote northeast and Himachal Pradesh in the north.

JAPAN’s Cabinet approved a fresh economic stimulus package yesterday worth more than 28 trillion yen (USD275 billion), Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s latest effort to get the stalling recovery back on track. It focuses on Japan’s agriculture and tourism, and on providing support for the child and elder care industry to enable more women to work full-time, since the labor force is shrinking as the population ages.
More on p12
Japan called North Korea’s nuclear and missile development a “grave and imminent threat” to the region and international security, and criticized China’s increasingly assertive military action as dangerous in an annual defense report approved yesterday.

RUSSIA  The governor of a Siberian region where nomadic reindeer herders were evacuated after an outbreak of anthrax says a child has died in the epidemic.
The appearance of the bacterial disease in the Yamalo-Nenets region is the first fatal anthrax outbreak reported in Russia in 75 years.

SOUTH SUDAN The United Nations refugee agency says about 60,000 people have fled South Sudan since fighting broke out between rival army factions almost four weeks ago. The agency says about 52,000 people went to Uganda, 7,000 to Sudan and 1,000 to Kenya. A peace deal reached a year ago has been repeatedly threatened by fighting.

NIGERIA’s army gunned down 348 Shiite Muslims in an attack last year in which one soldier was killed, according to a commission of inquiry report published Monday that calls for all involved in the killings to be prosecuted.

BULGARIA The trial of three Syrian nationals charged with terrorism offenses in Bulgaria was adjourned yesterday after their defense lawyers complained that the translation of the indictment into Arabic has been received only a day ago. The specialized court, which handles cases of terrorism and organized crime, accepted the request and adjourned the trial for September without fixing an exact date.