World briefs

KOREA North Korea said yesterday that South Korea must stop trying to mediate between Pyongyang and Washington, as it stepped up its pressure on the United States to work out new proposals to salvage deadlocked nuclear diplomacy.

INDONESIA’s top court yesterday rejected a losing presidential candidate’s allegations of massive and systematic election fraud, sealing a second term for Joko Widodo, who in fending off the rising power of Islamists has drifted toward authoritarian tactics.

AUSTRALIA The government said yesterday it was “urgently seeking clarification” on reports that an Australian had been detained in North Korea, which the attorney-general described as a “matter of the utmost seriousness.”

INDIA A minibus carrying students to a picnic fell into a gorge along a Himalayan road in Indian-controlled Kashmir yesterday, killing at least 11 and injuring seven others, officials said.

SUDAN’s protest movement yesterday said it received a new, joint proposal from the African Union and Ethiopia for a solution to the crisis in Sudan.

LIBYA U.N.-backed government reclaimed a strategic town near Tripoli from opposition forces that have been fighting for the past three months to capture the country’s capital, with a government spokesman saying yesterday its fighters were in full control of the town.

TUNISIA Twin suicide attacks targeting security forces struck Tunisia’s capital yesterday, killing a patrol officer and injuring at least eight people.

FRANCE’s national weather service issued its highest-level danger alert yesterday as it warned that parts of the country could expect temperatures to reach an “exceptional peak” today amid a record-setting heat wave in Europe.

VENEZUELA Authorities say two former Venezuelan officials have been indicted on U.S. money-laundering charges, including the ex-minister for electricity. The Miami U.S. attorney’s office said in a news release yesterday that 60-year-old Luis Alfredo Motta Dominguez faces seven counts of money laundering and one count of money-laundering conspiracy.