World briefs

CHINA Connections to Google Inc.’s popular email service have been blocked in China amid efforts by the government to limit access to the company’s services. Records from Google’s Transparency Report show online traffic from China to Gmail dropped to nearly zero on Saturday, although there was a tiny pickup yesterday.
VIETNAM Vietnamese police have detained a third blogger in a month in the latest crackdown on dissent in the communist country. Blogger Nguyen Dinh Ngoc, 48, was taken into custody and his house was searched in the southern commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh City on Saturday. The Ministry of Public Security said in a statement that police were investigating and will deal with Ngoc in accordance with the law.

GREECE  Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras says the country will hold early national elections on Jan. 25, after lawmakers failed to elect a new president in a third and final round of voting. His coalition government’s candidate for the presidential post, the 73-year-old former European commissioner Stavros Dimas, garnered 168 votes Monday from parliament’s 300 seats — short of the 180 votes needed to win.

GREECE The Greek coast guard says the death toll from a fire on board a Greek ferry in the Adriatic between Albania and Italy has increased to five. Meanwhile, the evacuation of hundreds of passengers is complete. The fire broke out on a car deck on board the Norman Atlantic before dawn Sunday as it sailed from Greece toward Italy.

IRAQ A suicide bomber struck a funeral north of Baghdad yesterday, killing at least 10 mourners, officials said. The bomber blew himself up inside a funeral tent in a farming area outside the mainly Sunni town of Taji, about 22 kilometers north of Baghdad, a police officer said. Another 20 mourners were wounded, he added. The funeral was for the father of two members of pro-government militias, known as Sahwa or Awakening Councils.

SYRIA A Syrian official says two suicide attackers have targeted separate natural gas facilities in the central province of Homs, killing 8 people. The state news agency SANA also reported the attacks, saying guards opened fire at the attackers as they drove toward the plants, forcing them to detonate their payloads before reaching their targets. It said the facilities are operating as usual.

LIBERIA Authorities say there have been dozens of new Ebola cases erupting along the border with Sierra Leone. The announcement by Assistant Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah yesterday marks a setback for Liberia, which has seen the number of cases stabilize somewhat after having been the hardest hit country in West Africa. Nearly 3,400 people have died from Ebola in Liberia over the past year.