World briefs

TAIWAN’s president says that relations with political and military rival China were moving forward despite widespread public opposition that crested with a student occupation of parliament last year.

CHINA A former mayor of the major eastern Chinese city of Nanjing has been sentenced to 15 years in prison on corruption charges, as President Xi Jinping’s anti-graft crackdown continues to gather steam. More on p10

PHILIPPINES Family members of a Filipino maid facing the death penalty after being convicted of drug trafficking in Indonesia have made a last-minute appeal for clemency to the country’s president. More on p12

JAPAN Two years after launching a bazooka of ultra-lavish monetary easing, Bank of Japan Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda has made only fitful progress toward the goal of the 2 percent inflation rate he and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said was needed to jolt the world’s No. 3 economy out of its deflationary rut.

INDIA Cooking stoves fired by kerosene and cow dung patties are a major source of pollution in the developing world. Experts are now putting a figure on the costs of that pollution, hoping to persuade governments and donors to subsidize cleaner replacements.

NEPAL Life returned to normal in Nepal yesterday after an opposition alliance cut short a crippling general strike over an impasse about how to approve the Himalayan nation’s constitution.
US Global warming isn’t just affecting the weather, it’s harming Americans’ health, President Obama says as he announces steps government and businesses will take to better understand and deal with the problem.

GREECE Authorities say two policemen were injured and nine people were arrested during a night of clashes between rioting youths and police in central Athens after a demonstration by hundreds of anarchists calling for the closure of a maximum-security prison. Police said yesterday the arrests were made on charges including attempted grievous bodily harm, arson and vandalism.

TURKEY A Dutch journalist has gone on trial in Turkey on charges of engaging in propaganda on behalf of the banned Kurdish rebel group on social media. Freelance journalist Frederike Geerdink Geerdink said on Twitter that the prosecutor recommended her acquittal at the opening hearing of her trial in the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir.

FRANCE Air traffic controllers went on strike Wednesday, prompting the cancellation of 40 percent of flights across France. The powerful SNCTA union called the two-day strike in a quarrel over working and retirement conditions, saying in a statement that “disruption is expected over the whole country.

KENYA Seven hours elapsed before police commandoes flew to the scene of the university attack, a delay which may have contributed to the high death toll and which points to deeper problems in the force.

IRAQI forensic teams in the newly recaptured city of Tikrit have started exhuming bodies from mass graves believed to contain some of the hundreds of soldiers killed by Islamic State militants last year.