World Briefs

IRAQ At least four rockets hit near the sprawling U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and a Iraqi base hosting American troops inside the Green Zone yesterday, but caused no casualties and only minor damage, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

GERMANY Countries with interests in Libya’s civil war recommitted themselves yesterday to uphold a barely working arms embargo, four weeks after a peace summit in Berlin was followed by numerous new arms violations, officials from Germany and the U.N. said. Foreign ministers and other officials from a dozen countries gathered on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference to try to bolster a drive to cut off outside military support for Libya’s warring parties.

EGYPT’s chief prosecutor yesterday denied allegations that the police tortured a human rights activist and vocal critic of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi. Police detained Patrick George Zaki (pictured), 28, an Egyptian student at the University of Bologna in Italy, after he arrived in Cairo earlier this month on what was supposed to be a brief visit home.

ISRAEL Opposition leader Benny Gantz is vowing to form a government that will include neither the indicted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor the predominantly Arab parties in Parliament. In a series of TV interviews two weeks before national elections, Gantz looked to project confidence that the March 2 vote will provide the decisive outcome that eluded the two previous elections last year

ISRAEL The Israeli military yesterday said it has thwarted an attempt by the Hamas militant group to hack soldiers’ phones by posing as young, attractive women on social media, striking up friendships and persuading them into downloading malware. Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told reporters that the phones of dozens of soldiers had been infected in recent months, although he said the army detected the scam early on and prevented any major secrets from reaching the Islamic militant group.

FRANCE on Saturday reported the first death outside Asia of a person infected with the new virus from China, an 80-year-old Chinese tourist who two French hospitals initially turned away, and also reported a new confirmed case that brought the country’s total to 12.

BRAZIL President Jair Bolsonaro addressed tens of thousands of evangelicals on a Rio de Janeiro beach Saturday, telling them Brazil’s government is working to restore morality in Latin America’s largest nation, just as pre-Carnival festivities get under way.

HAITI Relatives of 15 children killed in a fire at an orphanage continued to show up outside the burned-out compound Saturday seeking news about their missing kids. The gates to the two-story, walled compound were shut and guards shooed away visitors and journalists asking for information and access to the building.