World briefs

NORTH KOREAN leader Kim Jong Un will make his first foreign trip since coming to power three years ago to attend celebrations for the 70th anniversary of Russia’s victory in World War II, the Interfax news agency reported. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed to Interfax that the Korean leader would attend the event to be held on May 9. Chinese President Xi Jinping and about 20 foreign leaders are also expected to attend, the Itar-Tass news agency reported on Jan. 21.

CHINA A man admitted yesterday that he set a fire that spread through a bus in eastern China and injured 33, entering his plea from a hospital bed wheeled into a courtroom because of his own injuries in the blaze, a court said. Bao Laixu said he started the fire last July in the city of Hangzhou to take revenge against society and because he wanted to end his own life after a relapse of tuberculosis, the Hangzhou Intermediate People’s Court said on its microblog. The sentence is yet to be announced.

THAILAND A top leader of Thailand’s “Red Shirt” political movement was sentenced Wednesday to two years in jail for insulting a former prime minister, the latest blow to the supporters of another ex-prime minister, billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra. Bangkok Criminal Court found Jatuporn Prompan guilty of defaming Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva in two speeches in 2009.
MALAYSIA Civil aviation authorities will release a required report on the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 a day before the one-year anniversary, but it won’t have any conclusion on what happened because the search is ongoing. The report to be released March 7 is to focus on the search for the plane, which is believed to have crashed in the remote southern Indian Ocean.

AUSTRALIA’s prime minister promises to consult more widely before bestowing knighthoods in the future as he weathers an avalanche of criticism over his decision to make the husband of Queen Elizabeth II an Australian knight.

ISRAEL-LEBANON The Lebanese Hezbollah group claims responsibility for firing a missile that targeted an Israeli military convoy, an attack that prompted Israel to fire at least 50 artillery shells into Lebanon in a significant escalation along the volatile border.

UK A pathologist testifies that the body of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko was so radioactive that his post-mortem was “one of the most dangerous” ever undertaken. In Moscow, one of the suspects accused by Britain says the evidence being presented is “nonsense.”

GREECE’s radical new government yesterday signaled the country would backtrack or scrap a series of budget measures its eurozone creditor nations had demanded in exchange for bailout loans. Left wing Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (pictured) described the country’s bailout budget commitments as “crushing and unobtainable,” while his finance minister called the bailout agreements a “toxic mistake.”