World briefs

GERMANY At least four police cars were set alight and two officers injured yesterday as authorities confronted violent anti-austerity protesters ahead of the inauguration ceremony for the European Central Bank’s new headquarters in Frankfurt.

CHINA The Cabinet agency that oversees China’s biggest banks, oil producers and other government companies has announced plans to have outside auditors examine their foreign assets in a new move to tighten control over state industry. The announcement comes amid a spreading anti-corruption crackdown led by President Xi Jinping in which executives of companies including PetroChina Ltd. and China Mobile Ltd. have been detained.

INDONESIA may not execute 10 drug smugglers in the near future pending rulings on legal appeals filed by some of them. Vice President Jusuf Kalla said yesterday the government has to be careful and await the decisions by the Supreme Court. The execution of nine foreign and one Indonesian inmates were adjourned since four of them filed judicial reviews and two challenged the president’s rejection of clemency in the administrative court. The foreigners include three Nigerians, two Australians, four men from Brazil, France, Ghana and a Filipino woman.

VANUATU Relief workers rush to deliver desperately needed food and water to survivors living on Vanuatu’s outer islands after a monstrous cyclone wiped out entire villages and flattened vast swathes of the South Pacific nation’s landscape. Planes carried food, water and medical supplies to hard-hit Tanna Island, where aerial assessments showed more than 80 percent of homes or buildings had been partially or completely destroyed by Cyclone Pam.

BENGLADESH A court in Bangladesh’s capital yesterday indicted a leader of a hardline Islamist group and seven students in the hacking death of an atheist blogger two years ago.

NEPAL A court in southern Nepal sentences a man to 35 years in prison for the rape and murder of a 7-year-old girl in a case that sparked outrage in the Himalayan nation.

JAPAN U.S. first lady Michelle Obama is visiting Japan and Cambodia, who are among Asia’s richest and poorest nations, to highlight cooperation on helping girls finish their educations. The five-day trip that began in Tokyo yesterday is Mrs. Obama’s first visit to Japan.

USA – CUBA New direct charter flights between New York City and Cuba are now taking off. Cuba Travel Services has started offering a weekly Tuesday charter between John F. Kennedy International Airport and Havana for people authorized by the U.S. government to visit the island. In January, the Obama administration announced it would be easing travel restrictions.

USA A U.S. Air Force veteran and airplane mechanic plotted to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State group and was arrested on terrorism charges, federal prosecutors said Tuesday. Tairod Nathan Webster Pugh, of Neptune, New Jersey, was due yesterday in a New York federal court after being indicted on charges of attempting to provide material support to a terrorist group and obstructing justice.

SERBIA makes the first arrests of people suspected of carrying out killings in the Srebrenica massacre, a milestone in healing the wounds of Europe’s worst civilian slaughter since World War II.