World Briefs

THAILAND’s military-installed prime minister said yesterday he plans to lift martial law 10 months after staging a coup, but will invoke a special security measure that critics say is more draconian. The development has sparked concern from human rights groups, lawyers, political parties and scholars who say the measure, Article 44 of a junta-imposed interim constitution, gives PM Prayuth Chan-ocha unchecked authority over all three branches of government.

SOUTH CHINA Sea China is “creating a great wall of sand” through land reclamation in the South China Sea, causing serious concerns about its territorial intentions, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet said yesterday.

JAPAN plans to extend its sanctions against North Korea for two more years when they expire April 13 after failing to get promised updates on an investigation into kidnappings of Japanese citizens decades ago, the government spokesman said yesterday.

IRAN Negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program reached a critical phase with diplomats struggling to overcome substantial differences just a day before a deadline for the outline of an agreement. With target date for a framework accord just hours away, the top diplomats from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany were meeting with Iran to try to bridge remaining gaps and hammer out an understanding for a final accord in June.

GERMANY Lufthansa says its insurers are setting aside USD300 million to deal with possible costs resulting from last week’s crash of a Germanwings jet in the French Alps, in which 150 people died. Lufthansa confirmed a report on the set-aside in the daily Handelsblatt yesterday.

TURKEY Turkish news agencies say that members of a banned leftist group have taken a chief prosecutor hostage in his office inside a courthouse in Istanbul. The private Dogan news agency says some shots were fired inside. State media identified the prosecutor as Mehmet Selim Kiraz, who’s investigating the death of a teenager killed by a police charge in 2013.

USA Home price increases continued to rise at a steady pace in January, as the housing market deals with affordability problems and few properties listed for sale. The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index rose 4.6 percent in January compared with 12 months earlier. That is up from growth of 4.4 percent in December.

USA The Rolling Stones are zipping across N America again. The rock band announced a 15-city stadium tour yesterday that will kick off May 24 in San Diego, California. Other stops include Columbus, Ohio; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Dallas, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia; Orlando, Florida; and Nashville, Tennessee. The “Zip Code” tour will once again reunite Jagger, drummer Watts and guitarists Richards and Wood.