World briefs

INDONESIA Security forces have located the bodies of 16 people and a soldier who were killed in one of the bloodiest separatist attacks in Indonesia’s restive Papua province, a military official said yesterday.

PHILIPPINES Immigration authorities say they have arrested an American Roman Catholic priest accused of sexually assaulting altar boys in a remote central town in a case one official described as “shocking and appalling.”

JAPAN A U.S. Marine refueling plane and a fighter jet crashed into the Pacific Ocean off Japan’s southwestern coast after colliding yesterday, and rescuers found two of the seven crew members, one of them in stable condition, officials said.

IRAN A suicide car bomber struck a police headquarters in the Iranian port city of Chabahar yesterday, killing at least two policemen and wounding 42 people, state TV reported. A little-known Sunni jihadist group claimed responsibility for the attack, which Iran’s foreign minister accused of being “foreign-backed.”

YEMEN The head of the U.N. food agency has accused Shiite Houthi rebels of blocking access to food deliveries to civilians devastated by the war in Yemen.

SOMALIA A bloody rivalry has emerged between extremist groups in Somalia as the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab hunts upstart fighters allied to the Islamic State group, who have begun demanding protection payments from major businesses.

CYPRUS Police in the breakaway north of ethnically split Cyprus say the bodies of three people have been recovered from river beds at two different locations after flash floods are believed to have swept them away.

EU Just days before scores of countries sign up to a landmark United Nations migration pact, a number of European Union nations have begun joining the list of those not willing to endorse the agreement.

FRANCE Paris police and store owners are bracing for new violence at protests tomorrow, despite President Emmanuel Macron’s surrender over a fuel tax hike that unleashed weeks of unrest.

BRAZIL Prosecutors say they’ve launched an investigation into international trading companies suspected of paying more than USD30 million in bribes to employees of state-owned oil company Petrobras.

CANADA China yesterday demanded Canada release a Huawei Technologies executive who was arrested in a case that adds to technology tensions with Washington and threatens to complicate trade talks.