CHINA A pilot said yesterday that he is anxious but excited about flying a solar plane solo from China to Hawaii on the longest leg of the first attempt to fly around the world without a drop of fuel. André Borschberg, 62, is due to fly over the Pacific Ocean for five days and five nights in the plane that has more than 17,000 solar cells on its wings to power its motors and recharge its batteries for nighttime flying.
MALDIVES A court in the Maldives on Saturday ordered three opposition leaders and 172 of their supporters detained further after they were arrested for violence during a protest demanding the president to resign and freedom for a jailed ex-president. With the court order the entire opposition leadership behind Friday’s anti-government protests is detained.
GERMANY Chancellor Angela Merkel is commemorating the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp along with survivors and some of the U.S. soldiers who were there at the time.
MYANMAR parliament speaker and former junta member Shwe Mann said Friday on a visit to Washington that he will run for the nation’s presidency if nominated by the ruling party, and would consider forming a coalition with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
SOUTH KOREA confirmed yesterday that North Korea detained a South Korean student of New York University, but said it was still unclear whether the 21-year-old New Jersey resident attempted to enter the North illegally. An official from South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles affairs with North Korea, said his department was still trying to gather information on Won Moon Joo’s travels and the circumstances of his arrest.
AFGHANISTAN An official says at least 18 people died and another three were injured when a minibus plummeted into a ravine in a remote area of the northwestern Badghis province.
NIGERIA Hundreds of girls and women, many bewildered and traumatized, are being registered, fed and given medical care in their first day out of Nigeria’s war zone. The group of 275 women and children are among the nearly 700 freed in the past week by the Nigerian military from Boko Haram extremists and the first to be transported to the safety of a Malkohi refugee camp here in Yola in the country’s northeast.
ITALY The Italian Coast Guard says the bodies of at least 10 migrants have been recovered at sea in three separate rescue operations off Libya’s coast. Those rescues are some of more than a dozen carried out yesterday in the Mediterranean, and follow rescues a day earlier in which 3,690 migrants were saved from smugglers’ boats.
YEMEN Human Rights Watch says a Saudi-led coalition may have used cluster bombs in its airstrikes targeting Shiite rebels in Yemen. In a report released yesterday, the U.S.-based group says satellite imagery indicates the munitions landed “within 600 meters of several dozen buildings in four to six village clusters.”
YEMEN At least 20 troops from a Saudi-led Arab coalition, including Yemeni expatriates in shorts, landed yesterday in Yemen’s southern coastal city of Aden on a “reconnaissance” mission amid a fierce offensive by Shiite rebels and their allies there, Yemeni military officials said.
UK The Duchess of Cambridge delighted her nation and royal enthusiasts around the world by delivering a princess. The baby — Prince William and Kate’s second child — was born Saturday morning and weighed 3.7 kilograms, officials said. She is fourth in line to the throne and the fifth great-grandchild of 89-year-old Queen Elizabeth II.
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