World briefs

AUSTRALIA Tony Abbott, Australia’s prime minister, yesterday reshuffled his cabinet and pledged to reset his government with a renewed focus on the economy in a bid to tackle a slump in poll ratings. Fifteen months into a three-year term in office, Mr Abbott sacked defense minister David Johnston, and promoted immigration minister Scott Morrison to the post of minister of social services.

AUSTRALIA An Australian woman was charged with murder yesterday in the deaths of seven of her children and her niece, whose bodies were found inside her home, police said. Mersane Warria, 37, was charged with eight counts of murder in a bedside hearing at a hospital in the northern city of Cairns where she is recovering from stab wounds, Queensland state police said.

USA Two police officers were ambushed and shot to death yesterday in their vehicle in New York City. They were “quite simply, assassinated,” and the suspect, who fatally shot himself, had made Instagram posts that were very anti-police, the NYC police commissioner says.

PAKISTAN One of the gravediggers at Peshawar’s largest graveyard has a rule. He says he never cries when he buries the dead. He’s a professional. But as the small, white-shrowded bodies of children flowed in from a school massacre this week that killed 148 people, Tal Muhammad broke down and wept.

GUANTANAMO The Pentagon said that four Afghans from the Guantanamo Bay detention center have been returned to their home country in what U.S. officials are citing as a sign of their confidence in new Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. Obama administration officials said they worked quickly to fulfill the request from Ghani, in office just three months, to return the four as a kind of reconciliation and mark of improved U.S.-Afghan relations.

CUBA Everyone in Cuba is talking about the startling turn in relations with the United States, with one notable exception: Fidel Castro. So far, the larger-than-life retired Cuban leader has made no public comment on the biggest news in years — that the U.S. and his island nation will restore diplomatic relations after more than 50 years of hostility.

LIBERIA Health workers carrying thermometers and sanitizers manned polling stations across Liberia over the weekend as voters cast their ballots in a twice-delayed Senate election that has been criticized for its potential to spread the deadly Ebola disease. A total of 1.9 million voters are registered to participate in 15 Senate races throughout the country contested by 139 candidates.