World briefs

CHINA Women in the Chinese capital in the final stage of pregnancy during the 2008 Beijing Olympics — when officials strictly controlled air pollution — gave birth to heavier babies than in years when the city was smoggier, a study says.

KOREAS South Korea’s spy agency tells lawmakers that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered the execution of 15 senior officials this year who were accused of challenging his authority.

USA-JAPAN Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will seek support for a trans-Pacific trade pact that has divided U.S. lawmakers as he makes the first address by a Japanese leader to a joint meeting of Congress.

NIGERIA’s military says it is moving 200 girls and 93 women from a northeastern forest where they were rescued from Boko Haram extremists. Army spokesman Col. Sani Usman says many are traumatized.

SYRIA In the span of a month, Syrian insurgents have routed government forces across the country’s northwest, flushing them out of strongholds in a string of embarrassing defeats for President Bashar Assad. The disintegration of government forces in Idlib province, coupled with recent losses in the southern province of Daraa, punctures the notion that Assad is operating from a position of strength, and lays bare some of the government’s fundamental weaknesses after four years of civil war.

YEMEN’s Shiite rebels and their allies advanced in the southern city of Aden on yesterday, capturing parts of an upscale neighborhood and seizing men they accuse of fighting them from their homes. Security officials in the city said the rebels, known as Houthis, aided by military forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, had moved up the seaside road in the neighborhood of Khormaksar, taking an area stretching from the Russian Consulate to the Crater business district.

VENEZUELA government workers are getting a few extra hours off each day as officials try to save on electricity. Starting immediately, government offices will stay open only six hours a day, closing early at 1 p.m., Electric Energy Minister Jesse Chacon said Tuesday. A lack of infrastructure investment and surging demand driven by some of the world’s lowest tariffs has been battering Venezuela’s electricity sector for years.

USA Jack Ely, the singer known for “Louie Louie,” the low-budget recording that became one the most famous songs of the 20th century, died at his home in Redmond, Oregon, after a long battle with an illness. He was 71.

UKRAINE There has been no change in background radiation levels in the Ukrainian capital as a result of nighttime fires in woodlands in the exclusion zone around the destroyed Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Ukrainian authorities said yesterday.

GREECE is to present a draft bill of reforms to creditors, hoping for approval which would pave the way for unlocking vitally needed bailout funds. The draft bill is expected to include measures proposed by Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis during the government’s negotiations, which have dragged on for more than three months.