World briefs

SKOREA-JAPAN South Korea lifts an overseas travel ban on a Japanese journalist charged with defaming the South Korean president.

INDIA Violent protests erupt in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir after a civilian and a militant were killed in an encounter with the army.

MYANMAR Government troops have occupied more than 20 strategic positions held by ethnic Kokang rebels in two months of fierce fighting near the border with China, state media say, but a spokesman for the insurgents denies the claim.

AUSTRALIA’s government says it has completed preparations to send about 300 additional troops to Iraq.

AUSTRALIA A golfer who was bitten on the leg by a crocodile while playing at an Australian tourist resort says he was partly at fault for hitting his ball in the water and disturbing the aggressive reptile while it sunbathed.

USA Fresh from a two-day road trip, Hillary Rodham Clinton is making her 2016 campaign debut in Iowa at a small-town gathering reminiscent of her Senate “listening tour.”

USA Percy Sledge, who recorded the classic 1966 soul ballad “When a Man Loves a Woman,” has died. He was 74. Coroner Dr. William “Beau” Clark of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, confirmed to The Associated Press that Sledge died early yesterday morning.

USA An airport worker who fell asleep and found himself trapped in a plane’s cargo hold forced a Los Angeles-bound Alaska Airlines flight to return to Seattle on Monday afternoon. The flight had to return to Seattle when noises were heard from the worker in the hold as the plane took flight.

UKRAINE Fighting rages on the outskirts of the rebel stronghold of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine despite an agreement reached by the Ukrainian and Russian foreign ministers.

TURKEY-UK Turkish authorities have begun deporting back to Britain nine British citizens who were arrested trying to cross into Syria, a Turkish official said yesterday. One of the group was expelled late Monday.

SOMALIA Ten people were killed yesterday in an assault on the offices of Somalia’s education ministry and seven attackers were also killed, said a government spokesman. The fatalities include eight civilians and two soldiers, said spokesman Ridwan Haji Abdiweli.