Word briefs

CHINA’s efforts to reduce poverty have improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people, but they could be undermined in the future without efforts to root out corruption and better address public complaints, a United Nations representative for human rights warns.

TAIWAN’s financial regulator is investigating Mega Financial Holding Co. after New York state ordered its banking unit to pay a USD180 million penalty and install an independent monitor for violating the state’s laws against money laundering.

KOREAS The American-led U.N. Command in South Korea yesterday accused North Korea of planting land mines near a truce village inside the Demilitarized Zone that divides the two Koreas. Much of the border, one of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints, is strewn with land mines and laced with barbed wire.

MYANMAR Officials say United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will attend a peace conference next week that seeks to end decades of armed conflict with ethnic minority groups.

SYRIA Turkish artillery shelled Islamic State targets across the border in Syria for the second consecutive day, a senior Turkish official said, amid reports that Turkey-backed Syrian rebels are preparing an offensive against an IS-held border town.

UKRAINE The leaders of Russia, Germany and France have raised the alarm about a recent uptick in fighting in eastern Ukraine, the Kremlin said yesterday. President Vladimir Putin’s office said Putin, Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande discussed Ukraine in a telephone call earlier in the day and condemned recent fighting in eastern Ukraine. The conflict in Ukraine’s industrial heartland between Russia-backed separatists and government troops has killed more than 9,500 people since it began in 2014.

SWEDEN An eight-year-old boy has been killed after a grenade was thrown into a flat in the Swedish city of Gothenburg, police said. Yuusuf Warsame from Birmingham in the UK was sleeping in the living room of the flat in the Biskopsgarten area, where he was visiting relatives. According to BBC, police said the “despicable” attack may have been linked to an underworld feud.

USA Chicago police say three children, including a 3-month-old baby, and one man have been killed in an apartment building fire.

USA McDonald’s is recalling millions of fitness bands that had been given away in Happy Meals because they might cause skin irritation or burns to children. The fast-food chain said that it would stop distributing the bands in Happy Meals. Now it’s recalling 29 million of them in the U.S., and 3.6 million in Canada. The company, based in Oak Brook, Illinois, received more than 70 reports of incidents after children wore the bands.

OLYMPICS Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike is preparing for a strenuous workout with the next Summer Olympics headed her way. The practice started when she received the Olympic flag Sunday in the official handover ceremony from her Rio counterpart, Mayor Eduardo Paes.