World Briefs

CHINA  Hospitals are using facial recognition to identify people who sell doctors’ appointments at an illegal markup, the latest application of an emerging technology that is being used in places to tighten Communist Party control over the country’s 1.4 billion people. 

BANGLADESH An official says a flight headed to Dubai made an emergency landing in Chittagong, Bangladesh, after a hijack attempt. No further information was released by press time.

JAPAN The people of Okinawa voted yesterday on a plan for a U.S. military base relocation in a referendum that will send a message on how they feel about housing American troops in Japan, who many see as a burden on the group of tiny southwestern islands.

INDIA At least 150 people have died and about 200 people have been hospitalized after drinking tainted liquor in two separate incidents in India’s remote northeast, authorities said yesterday.

USA While on trial for child pornography in 2008, R. Kelly met an underage girl he later invited to his home, according to prosecutors who depicted the R&B star as manipulative and sometimes violent.

USA Retired astronaut Mark Kelly (pictured) kicked off a “mission for Arizona” as he launched his U.S. Senate campaign with a rally in Tucson, the city where his wife, Gabrielle Giffords (right), survived a shooting when she was a congresswoman. That attack in 2011 led Kelly to leave NASA and become a political activist, pushing for gun control.

VENEZUELAN migrants yesterday helped clean debris from a bridge where troops loyal to President Nicolas Maduro a day earlier fired tear gas on activists trying to deliver humanitarian aid in violent clashes that left two people dead and some 300 injured.

MOROCCO Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, flew up to a village in Morocco’s rugged Atlas Mountains yesterday to visit a school and encourage girls to pursue an education no matter what the obstacles.

CINEMA Filmmaker Stanley Donen, a giant of the Hollywood musical who through such classics as “Singin’ in the Rain” and “Funny Face” helped give us some of the most joyous sounds and images in movie history, has died. He was 94.