World briefs

HONG KONG Support for China-backed legislation to overhaul Hong Kong’s next chief executive election has slipped 4 percentage points as officials head into a third week of campaigning for public approval. According to a University of Hong Kong Public Opinion Program survey, some 42.5% of respondents in the city supported the government’s election proposal compared with 46.7% approval in late April.

AUSTRALIA El Nino is back. Australia has declared the event for the first time since 2010 and says it will probably be “substantial.” Japan also said El Nino had emerged. The tropical Pacific is in the early stages of the pattern that can bring drought to parts of Asia and rains to South America, and ocean temperatures will probably stay above thresholds through the southern hemisphere winter and at least into spring, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology said yesterday.

AUSTRALIA’s chief finance minister said Tuesday that his budget blueprint for the next fiscal year will maintain a credible path to an eventual surplus despite China’s slowing economy and weak commodity prices.

JAPAN Regulatory obstacles to paralyzed Japanese using a smart exoskeleton called ReWalk highlight problems with the government’s drive to expand the robotics industry beyond manufacturing uses.

MYANMAR’s human rights body says two soldiers tried for the shooting death of a freelance journalist have been acquitted by a military court.

YEMEN Warplanes from a Saudi-led coalition pummel arms and ammunition depots on a mountainside on the edge of Yemen’s capital just one day before a humanitarian cease-fire is due to start and a U.N. envoy arrives on his first visit to try to end the war.

USA Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s lawyers rest their case in their bid to save him from execution after death penalty opponent Sister Helen Prejean testifies Tsarnaev expressed genuine sorrow for the victims.

BELGIUM The European Union is seeking a U.N. Security Council resolution within days to let its members hunt down human traffickers in the Mediterranean and destroy their boats, a senior EU official said yesterday. The EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, says the aim is to “destroy the business model” of the traffickers by wrecking the boats they use to smuggle migrants.

USA Royal Dutch Shell’s Arctic drilling program clears a major bureaucratic hurdle to begin drilling for oil and gas off Alaska’s northwestern coast this summer.

FRANCE-CUBA French President Francois Hollande called for ending of the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba, saying France “will be a faithful ally” as Cuba reforms its centrally planned economy and tries to re-enter the global economic system. Hollande’s one-day trip made him the first French president to visit Cuba since it became an independent country.