World Briefs

NORTH KOREA is saying nothing so far about outside media reports that leader Kim Jong Un may be unwell and there’s renewed worry about who’s next in line to run a nuclear-armed country that’s been ruled by the same family for seven decades. Questions about Kim’s health flared after he skipped an April 15 commemoration of the 108th birthday of his grandfather, North Korea founder Kim Il Sung.

IRAN’s Revolutionary Guard said it put the Islamic Republic’s first military satellite into orbit, dramatically unveiling what experts described as a secret space program with a surprise launch yesterday that came amid wider tensions with the United States. There was no immediate independent confirmation of the launch of the satellite, which the Guard called “Noor,” or light.

INDIAN government forces killed four rebels in a gunbattle in disputed Kashmir during a stringent lockdown to combat the coronavirus, the Indian army said yesterday. The fighting broke out in a village in southern Shopian district as counterinsurgency police and soldiers raided a house on a tip that militants were hiding there.

INDIA said yesterday that it plans to manufacture thousands of wristbands that will monitor the locations and temperatures of coronavirus patients and help perform contact tracing. The wristband project aims to track quarantined patients and aid health workers and those delivering essential services.

LEBANON A Palestinian woman from Syria has become the first refugee living in a camp in Lebanon to test positive for the coronavirus, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said yesterday. It triggered a spate of testing to determine whether other residents have been infected.

CAMEROON’s President Paul Biya has acknowledged that the military massacred innocent people, including women and children, in a northwestern village in February after the government first denied it. A statement from Biya’s office said the president has asked for legal action. Three soldiers have already been arrested.

EUROPEAN UNION leaders are preparing for a new virtual summit to take stock of the damage the coronavirus has inflicted on the lives and livelihoods of the bloc’s citizens and to thrash out a more robust plan to revive their ravaged economies.

UK Britain’s Parliament went back to work Tuesday, and the political authorities had a message for lawmakers: Stay away. A few dozen legislators sat, well-spaced, in the Commons, and agreed on arrangements for lawmakers to ask questions from home using videoconferencing program Zoom, beamed onto screens erected around the wood-paneled chamber.

NEW ZEALAND While most countries are working on ways to contain the coronavirus, New Zealand has set itself a much more ambitious goal: eliminating it altogether. And experts believe the country could pull it off. The virus “doesn’t have superpowers,” said Helen Petousis-Harris, a vaccine expert at the University of Auckland. “Once transmission is stopped, it’s gone.”

CANADIAN police said Tuesday they believe there are at least 22 victims after a gunman wearing a police uniform shot people in their homes and set fires in a rampage across rural communities in Nova Scotia over the weekend. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said they have recovered remains from some of the destroyed homes.