World Briefs

TAIWAN Chinese attempts at military coercion only strengthen Taiwan’s resolve to defend itself, the president of the self-governing island republic said. Tsai Ing-wen’s comments followed what Taiwan’s defense ministry called a major foray by Chinese military planes into airspace just south of the island.

ROYALTY The sultan of Brunei has been on the throne for 52 years, making him the second-longest reigning monarch in the world, after Queen Elizabeth II. In Brunei – a rather traditional, deeply Muslim Southeast Asian country – Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah (pictured) is known for leading a decadent life. 

INDONESIA’s presidential election today pits incumbent Joko Widodo against former special forces Gen. Prabowo Subianto in a repeat of the 2014 contest. Widodo, a furniture exporter and heavy metal fan who had a meteoric rise in politics, chose a Muslim cleric as his VP candidate. Subianto’s running mate is a self-made tycoon.

PHILIPPINES Police arrested four women they said were wives of Abu Sayyaf commanders who took care of their financial transactions, helped procure guns and bomb parts and arranged the travels of foreign militants to the country. 

INDIA Beleaguered airline Jet Airways’ stock fell sharply yesterday after its former chairman reportedly withdrew plans to bid for a controlling stake in the company and its flight operations might be temporarily halted. Naresh Goyal, who founded Jet Airways in 1992 and saw it soar to become India’s largest airline, abandoned plans to bid for a controlling stake.

COLUMBINE Twenty years after the Columbine High School shooting made practicing for armed intruders as routine as fire drills, many parents have only tepid confidence in the ability of schools to stop a gunman, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

DAVID BRION DAVIS, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who documented the centrality of slavery in Western culture through a landmark trilogy that made him among the world’s most respected and influential scholars, has died. Davis, a professor emeritus at Yale University (pictured), died over the weekend at age 92. Yale announced that he died of natural causes.