World briefs

CHINA Twenty-one coal miners were killed when a mine collapsed in northern China. The disaster occurred in Shenmu in Shaanxi province in the heart of the country’s coal-mining belt, according to state media. Sixty-six other miners were rescued.

SINGAPORE is making a clarion call to citizens and businesses to reduce domestic and industrial waste toward zero as the country’s recycling rate has stalled and its sole landfill may run out of space by 2035.

MYANMAR A court rejected the appeal of two Reuters journalists convicted of violating the country’s Official Secrets Act during their reporting on the country’s crackdown on Rohingya Muslims.

INDIA Massive anti-India protests and clashes erupted in disputed Kashmir yesterday, leading to injuries to at least 16 people after a gunbattle between militants and government forces overnight killed two rebels, police and residents said.

SUDAN The government says more than three weeks of anti-government protests has left 24 people dead.

SYRIA Artillery shelling by government forces pounded parts of the northwestern Idlib province, thwarting an infiltration attempt by militants as tension rises in the region following victories by al-Qaida-linked militants against Turkey-backed opposition fighters, Syria’s state news agency reported.

GREECE Defense Minister Panos Kammenos, leader of the junior partner in the country’s coalition government, has resigned over the Macedonia name deal. 

AUSTRIA Three German skiers have been killed in an avalanche in Austria and a fourth is missing, police said yesterday as snowfall set in again in the northern Alps.

FRANCE A powerful explosion apparently caused by a gas leak has blown apart a Paris bakery and devastated the street it was on, killing three people and injuring dozens.

BOLIVIA Italy sent an aircraft to Bolivia yesterday to pick up fugitive communist militant Cesare Battisti after he was captured there nearly three decades after he was convicted of murder.

COLOMBIA Thousands of Colombians staged protests in several cities to demand the resignation of the country’s chief prosecutor. Nestor Humberto Martinez is a key U.S. ally in the war on drugs, but his critics at home say he has withheld information that links Colombian politicians and business groups with Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht, at the center of a mammoth regional corruption scandal.