World briefs

HONG KONG A car crash involving three vehicles in Deep Water Bay, South District of Hong Kong left 53 people injured yesterday, local media reported. The accident took place on Island Road at around 3 p.m. local time when two coaches and a truck collided.

NORTH KOREA The North Korean military general believed by archrival South Korea to have been behind two attacks on South Korea that killed 50 people in 2010 has died. He was 77. The North’s main Rodong sinmun newspaper said yesterday that Kim Kyok Sik died of acute respiratory failure on Sunday.

PHILIPPINES The Philippines’ military chief has flown to a Filipino-occupied island in the South China Sea amid territorial disputes in the area with China, vowing to defend the islet and help the mayor develop tourism and marine resources there.

AUSTRALIA’s top finance official said yesterday he will introduce legislation to force global corporations to pay a fair amount of tax on their Australian earnings, potentially boosting government revenue by billions of dollars and adding momentum to international efforts to combat corporate tax avoidance.

THAILAND’s 87-year-old king, the world’s longest-reigning monarch, left a Bangkok hospital he checked into last year and returned Sunday to his seaside palace south of the capital. King Bhumibol Adulyadej had been in hospital since last October, when he had his gallbladder removed.

POLAND President Bronislaw Komorowski yesterday vowed to urgently seek a referendum on voting and tax rules if he is re-elected, saying that he was drawing a lesson from his poor electoral showing that saw him forced into a runoff. The candidate of the conservative nationalist Law and Justice party, Andrzej Duda, is expected to receive 34.5 percent of the first-round vote, to Komorowski’s 33.1 percent, according to the IPSOS exit poll released after Sunday’s vote.

SWEDEN’s highest court yesterday rejected WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s appeal of a pre-trial detention order in a nearly five-year-old investigation of alleged sex crimes. The Supreme Court in Stockholm on upheld rulings by lower courts ordering the detention for Assange, saying there is no reason to rescind it as the investigation continues.

FRANCE’s top security official says the country supports a plan to distribute asylum-seekers among European countries by quota, agreeing that the current system puts an unfair burden on a handful of nations. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told RTL radio yesterday that France supports the plan, which is unraveling in the face of opposition among European Union countries. France, along with Sweden and Germany, are among a few countries accepting refugees.

USA-RUSSIA Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to Russia this week for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kerry’s first visit to Russia since the Ukraine crisis began, the State Department announced yesterday.