World Briefs

CHINA Tech-giant Huawei’s reputation has been repeatedly attacked by the United States and others over allegations of Communist Party control. Now its vaunted status at home has taken a blow over an ex-employee’s report that he was thrown in jail for eight months on extortion charges after attempting to negotiate a severance package.

CHINA Page after page, the names stack up: 629 girls and women from across Pakistan who were sold as brides to Chinese men and taken to China. The list, obtained by The Associated Press, was compiled by Pakistani investigators determined to break up trafficking networks exploiting the country’s poor and vulnerable.

SOUTH KOREA Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi arrived in South Korea yesterday for his first visit in four years amid efforts to patch up relations damaged by Seoul’s decision to host a U.S. anti-missile system that Beijing perceives as a security threat.

PHILIPPINES Defense chief said he has recommended that the president not extend martial law in the country’s south, which was declared in 2017 to help troops quell a bloody siege by Islamic State group-aligned jihadists in Marawi city. Delfin Lorenzana said he told the president that Muslim militants have been weakened considerably and are no longer able to carry out an attack like the Marawi siege.

AFGHANISTAN A shooting ambush yesterday killed a Japanese physician and aid worker widely respected and beloved in the war-scarred nation, triggering an outpouring of grief among the people whose lives he helped change for the better. The leaders of Japan and Afghanistan expressed their condemnations of the attack that took the life of Tetsu Nakamura, 73, and also killed five Afghans.

UK NATO leaders yesterday played down their differences and insisted that they remain united over security issues and determined to defend each other despite a series of spats between the presidents of some of the alliance’s biggest member countries.

MEXICO President Andrés Manuel López Obrador prayed for the safety of the country with the relatives of nine U.S. dual citizens slaughtered in northern Mexico last month and assured them “at least four” suspects have been detained, a family member said.

GOOGLE The co-founders of Google are stepping down as executives of its parent company, Alphabet, ending a remarkable two decades during which Larry Page and Sergey Brin (pictured) shaped a startup born in a Silicon Valley garage into one of the largest, most powerful — and, increasingly, most feared — companies in the world.