World briefs

GENETICS Stanford University has cleared three faculty members of any wrongdoing in dealings with a Chinese scientist who claims to have helped make the world’s first gene-edited babies. In a statement, Stanford said the faculty members did not participate in or have financial or other ties to the work by the scientist, He Jiankui, and had discouraged him from pursuing it.

NORTH KOREA Leader Kim Jong Un will visit Russia later this month, the Kremlin said yesterday, in a meeting that offers President Vladimir Putin an opportunity to emerge as a broker in the long-running nuclear standoff and raise Russia’s profile in regional affairs. 

PHILIPPINES Diplomats have started evacuating a small group of Filipinos from the Libyan capital after it was hit by a barrage of rocket fire that wounded one Filipino. Thirteen more Filipinos have sought help and are expected to be flown back home in the next few days. 

PAKISTAN Gunmen wearing Pakistani police and paramilitary uniforms ambushed a bus before dawn yesterday and killed 14 people after going through their ID cards and forcing them out on a remote part of a coastal highway in restive southwestern Baluchistan province, officials said.

PAKISTAN’s finance minister, Asad Umar, said he will step down amid a wave of criticism over the government’s handling of a financial crisis that has sent prices soaring. In a tweet he defended Prime Minister Khan’s leadership, calling him the “best hope” for Pakistan.

SPAIN With elections this month exposing an ideological divide that echoes the Civil War, descendants of the dictatorship’s victims worry they may lose the chance to recover the remains of their relatives. The far-right Vox party wants to scrap efforts to exhume and identify Franco’s victims.

PORTUGAL Authorities on Madeira Island are working to identify the victims of a tour bus crash that killed 29 people and injured 28 others, many of them German tourists who were onboard.

SUDAN’s new military rulers arrest ousted President Omar al-Bashir’s two brothers for corruption, part of a broad sweep against officials and supporters of the former government, the country’s official news agency reports.