World briefs

N KOREA Women activists including Gloria Steinem and two Nobel peace laureates says they may have to change plans to cross Korea’s Demilitarized Zone because authorities can’t guarantee their safety if they walk from the North to the South at Panmunjom, the symbolic but tense site where the Korean War armistice agreement was signed.

AFGHANISTAN At least a dozen Afghan police officers are killed in a series of insurgent attacks on checkpoints in the country’s southern Uruzgan province.

PAKISTAN’s military says its jets have carried out airstrikes against five militant hideouts in a tribal region bordering Afghanistan, killing 13 militants.

NEPAL must take lessons from earthquake-hit countries such as Mexico and strictly enforce existing building laws as it prepares to rebuild from two major quakes, a United Nations official says.

INDIA A train rams into tractor at unmanned railroad crossing in India, killing 10 and injuring 33.

JAPAN The governor of the southern Japanese prefecture of Okinawa says he will head to Washington to convey local objections to a plan to relocate a U.S. air base.

JAPAN Takata Corp. agrees to declare 33.8 million air bags defective, a move that will double the number of cars and trucks included in what is now the largest auto recall in U.S. history.
Indonesia A Japanese man who says he was deceived into carrying someone else’s bag on a flight into Indonesia was sentenced to life in prison yesterday for smuggling methamphetamine into the country. Masaru Kawada, 73, was arrested in November at Minangkabau Airport in West Sumatra’s capital, Padang, after customs officials found 2.35 kg of crystal methamphetamine in his luggage.

UK More than 200 British police swooped down on suspected jewel thieves Tuesday, making arrests in the notorious Hatton Garden heist that took place in London over the Easter weekend. Scotland Yard said seven British men, ranging in age from 48 to 76, are being questioned in a London police station after the morning raids. The men were arrested in north London and in Kent, southeast of the city.

IRELAND Prince Charles offered a historic handshake Tuesday to Gerry Adams, longtime leader of the Irish nationalist Sinn Fein party and reputedly an Irish Republican Army commander when the outlawed group killed the prince’s great-uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten, in 1979. The peacemaking gesture marked the first time that Adams, Sinn Fein’s leader since 1983, had ever met a member of the British royal family.

UKRAINE is open to considering proposals to place a ballistic missile-defense system on its territory to ward off the risk of attacks from Russia, a senior Ukrainian defense official said yesterday. So far no one has offered.

IRAQ Thousands of displaced people fleeing from Ramadi and the violence in Iraq’s western Anbar province poured into Baghdad on Wednesday after the central government waived restrictions and granted them conditional entry, a provincial official said.

USA A longtime confidant of Hillary Rodham Clinton has been subpoenaed to testify before a special House panel investigating the deaths of four Americans at the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, according to an official familiar with the probe.