World Briefs

HONG KONG  Malaysian authorities denied entry to a radical Hong Kong lawmaker at Kuala Lumpur’s airport on Friday, the second time this week they have barred one of the city’s outspoken pro-democracy activists. Leung Kwok-hung was stopped on arrival by authorities who questioned him about the reason for his visit and how long he planned to stay, according to posts on his Facebook page. The posts said authorities put him on a flight back to Hong Kong.

CHINA A former Chinese elementary school teacher has been executed for molesting or raping 26 students, some as young as 4, in a case underscoring the vulnerability of rural children left behind by parents seeking jobs in cities. The intermediate People’s Court in Gansu said it carried out the sentence against Li Jishun on Thursday. Li committed his assaults in the classroom, dormitories and surrounding forest areas in 2011-2012.

MYANMAR rejected as unbalanced comments made by several Nobel Peace Prize winners calling for an end to the persecution of Rohingya Muslims. The Nobel laureates including South Africa’s Desmond Tutu, Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi and former East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta made the appeal following two conferences in the Norwegian capital last week. They called the situation of Rohingya in Myanmar “nothing less than genocide.”

RUSSIA  Vladimir Putin won’t be on the guest list when President Barack Obama and other world leaders gather in Germany next week — punishment for more than a year of alleged Kremlin-supported aggression in Ukraine.

NIGERIA A suicide bomber kills himself and 16 others outside a mosque in the Nigerian city Maiduguri, residents and officials say.

SYRIA  Activists say Syrian army airstrikes kill at least 70 people in embattled Aleppo province.

USA Hundreds of people fill a church in the Mississippi Delta for the funeral of B.B. King, who rose from sharecropper in the area’s flat cotton fields to worldwide fame as a blues singer and guitarist who influenced generations of entertainers.

USA Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley entered the Democratic presidential race on Saturday in a longshot challenge to Hillary Rodham Clinton for the party’s 2016 nomination, casting himself as a new generation leader who would rebuild the economy and reform Wall Street.

USA Key Patriot Act anti-terror provisions, including bulk collection of Americans’ phone records, expire at midnight unless senators come up with an 11th hour deal in an extraordinary yesterday afternoon session. Chances for that look all but nonexistent. Republican Sen. Rand Paul vowed Saturday to force the bulk phone collection program to expire — and the Senate’s complex rules allow him to do just that, at least temporarily.

USA-BRAZIL The legal battle over ownership of a 341-kilogram emerald may have been settled after six years and millions of dollars in legal and other costs. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Johnson tentatively ruled on Thursday that FM Holdings Inc. had established clear title to the Brazilian gem, which has been appraised at USD372 million.