World Briefs

HONG KONG has lifted a quarantine on the World Dream cruise ship after clearing all crew members of the new virus. The ship has been placed under quarantine since it docked Wednesday after eight mainland Chinese passengers on a voyage last month were diagnosed with the virus.

AFGHANISTAN Two U.S. soldiers were killed and six wounded in a so-called insider attack in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province late Saturday when an Afghan dressed in an Afghan army uniform opened fire, the U.S. military said. A member of Nangarhar’s provincial council, Ajmal Omer, told The Associated Press that the gunman was killed.

INDIA Dozens of artists and activists gathered in India’s capital yesterday to demand an end to violence against women in a country where such crimes are rising despite tough laws enacted seven years ago. A play was performed in a park in central Delhi at the event in solidarity with the global One Billion Rising movement.

LIBYA’s warring sides ended several days of U.N.-brokered talks without reaching a deal to consolidate a provisional cease-fire in and around the capital, the U.N. said. Another round of talks was proposed for later this month “as both sides agreed to the need to continue the negotiations.”

ISRAEL The Israeli military blocked Palestinian agricultural exports yesterday in the latest escalation of a monthslong trade war that comes amid fears of renewed violence as well. The military said it would not allow the Palestinians to transfer their products through their land crossing to Jordan.

SPAIN confirmed its second case of the new virus from China, and a plane evacuating more than 200 people from the Chinese city at the center of the epidemic landed yesterday in Britain. The coronavirus case was detected in Mallorca, a popular vacation island in the Mediterranean Sea, Spain’s National Microbiology Center said.

UK Trains, flights and ferries have been cancelled and weather warnings issued across the United Kingdom and elsewhere in northern Europe yesterday as Storm Ciara, named by the Met Office national weather agency, battered the region with hurricane-level winds.

ZAMBIA At a Chinese-run hospital in Zambia, some employees watched as people who recently returned from China showed up with coughs but were not placed in isolation. A doctor tending to those patients has stopped coming to work, and health workers have been ordered not to speak publicly about the new virus that has killed hundreds around the world.