World briefs

CHINA A flood in a shale mine in central China has left six miners dead, China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported. Xinhua said the shale mine flooded Monday night, but the weekend report didn’t indicate what caused the flooding. Rescuers found one body late Friday and five others Saturday, Xinhua said.

CHINA China’s central bank chief said that the nation’s growth rate has tumbled “a bit” too much and that policy makers have scope to respond, underscoring forecasts for further monetary easing in the world’s second-largest economy. “China’s inflation is also declining, so we need to be vigilant to see if the disinflation trend will continue, and if deflation will happen or not,” People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan. More on Boao Forum on p10-11

INDONESIA The number of foreign fishermen stranded on several remote eastern Indonesian islands has spiraled to 4,000, including some revealed in an Associated Press investigation to have been enslaved.

SRI LANKA President Maithripala Sirisena’s youngest brother has died two days after he was attacked with an ax in what authorities said was a personal dispute. Priyantha Sirisena, 42, died in a private hospital in Colombo on Saturday after he was airlifted from his hometown following the attack on Thursday. The attacker has surrendered to police. Sirisena was in China on an official visit when the attack took place. He returned to attend his brother’s funeral today.

FRANCE Ripped-up sick notes from a doctor found at pilot Lubitz’s home by German prosecutors suggest the 27-year-old had an illness he hid from his employers at Germanwings. Medical documents showed he had an existing illness —­ which wasn’t specified — but no suicide note was found. A Dusseldorf hospital confirmed that Lubitz had been treated recently, but didn’t say for what.

EGYPT’s top prosecutor yesterday named 18 Muslim Brotherhood members, including the group’s leader and his deputy, as terrorists in the first implementation of an anti-terror law passed earlier this year. In a statement, chief prosecutor Hisham Barakat said the decision follows a February court ruling that convicted Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie; his deputy Khairat el-Shater; the head of the group’s political party Saad el-Katatni and others of orchestrating violence in 2013 that killed 11 people and wounded over 90 outside their office.

ISRAEL Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday that he has “deep concern” over a pending nuclear deal the West appears close to signing with Israel’s arch-enemy Iran. Netanyahu said that he conveyed those fears to visiting American lawmakers, warning that the looming deal appears to “corroborate all our concerns and then some.”