World Briefs

NEPAL Avalanches in Nepal’s northern mountains injure five army rescuers and force the suspension of a search for bodies in a trekking village that was buried during April’s devastating earthquake.

BANGLADESH’s Supreme Court yesterday upheld the death sentence for a top leader of an Islamist party for war crimes and crimes against humanity during the country’s independence war against Pakistan in 1971. A four-member panel headed by the country’s Chief Justice S.K. Sinha dismissed the appeal by Jamaat-e-Islami party’s Secretary General Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed against a 2013 verdict sentencing him to death.

S KOREA The death toll continued to mount in South Korea’s MERS outbreak even as schools reopen and people recover from the virus. Nineteen people have died in the largest outbreak of the disease outside the Middle East, with three more dying since late Monday, the Health Ministry said.

PHILIPPINES A Philippine volcano spews plumes of ash, but volcanologists say the steam-driven explosions do not indicate an imminent violent eruption.

INDIA Nestle India says it will destroy instant noodles worth 3.2 billion rupees (USD50 million) following a sales ban imposed by Indian food safety authorities for unsafe levels of lead.

VATICAN CITY A draft copy of Pope Francis’ eagerly awaited encyclical on the environment calls for urgent action to protect the Earth and fight global warming, which the pope says is “mostly” due to human activity and the burning of fossil fuels.

SYRIA Kurdish fighters take full control of the border town of Tal Abyad, dealing a major blow to the Islamic State group’s ability to wage war in Syria.

RUSSIA’s military this year alone will receive over 40 new intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of piercing any missile defenses, President Vladimir Putin said yesterday in a blunt reminder of the nation’s nuclear might amid tensions with the West over Ukraine.

USA Donald Trump, the flamboyant real estate magnate and television personality whose fortune is valued at USD9 billion, is set to announce whether he intends to make a longshot run for the U.S. presidency on the ticket of the Republican Party.

USA Two escaped murderers remain at large as a woman charged with helping the killers flee from a maximum-security prison by providing them hacksaw blades, chisels and other tools makes a second court appearance.

USA An apartment building balcony collapsed early yesterday in Berkeley, California, killing five people and leaving eight others injured, many of them young people from Ireland, officials said. Irish Foreign Minister Charlie Flanagan told reporters in Dublin that all five of those killed were Irish students in the U.S. on temporary visas. He said a 21st birthday party was underway in the building at the time of the accident.