World Briefs

CHINA’s Qihoo 360 Technology Co. Ltd., a provider of internet security products and popular mobile browser, has received a USD9.1 billion offer from a group led by its chief executive to buy out its public shareholders.

AUSTRALIAN police issued an arrest warrant for an Australian doctor who appeared in an Islamic State movement recruitment video urging Western medical professionals to join him in Syria. Tareq Kamleh, a 29-year-old Australian born and educated doctor who had worked in several Australian public hospitals appeared in the video in April describing his medical work in Syria as his “jihad for Islam.”

INDONESIA Efforts to rescue people buried by a cliff collapse at an Indonesian beach resort on Java were hampered by high tide.

INDONESIA  The captain of a people-smuggling boat who says he was paid by Australian authorities to return the migrants to Indonesia has described a terrifying ordeal on the voyage back. The Indonesian captain, Johanes Humiang, said in an interview that his boat was seized by Australian authorities, who after interrogations and the offer of money transferred the crew and 65 migrants to two smaller vessels with insufficient fuel and food.

NEW ZEALAND’s economy all but stalled in the first quarter as lower prices for milk and oil pushed down growth to 0.2 percent. It was the worst quarterly performance in two years and below market expectations.

NEW ZEALAND Australia’s largest airline Qantas Airways plans to expand flights within New Zealand in a significant shakeup of the market.

SYRIA overtook Afghanistan to become the world’s biggest source of refugees last year, while the number of people forced from their homes by conflicts worldwide rose to a record 59.5 million, the United Nations’ refugee agency say. Pointing to crises in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Burundi and elsewhere, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said he doesn’t expect any improvement in 2015.

BELGIAN King Philippe is leading royalty and dignitaries in the commemoration of the 1815 Battle of Waterloo, a watershed in European history that marked the end of Napoleon and French domination and the beginning of the British century. Under overcast skies, hundreds of invited guests and thousands of re-enactors gathered under the Lion’s Mount monument exactly 200 years after the half-day battle killed more than 10,000 soldiers in a closely fought encounter between French troops and an international coalition led by Britain’s Duke of Wellington.

SERBIA  Hungary’s plans to build a fence along the border with Serbia to stop a flow of migrants reaching the country were met with criticism both in the Balkans and the European Union yesterday, with the Serbian prime minister saying he was “shocked and surprised” by the project that could isolate his country.

USA The prison worker charged with helping two convicted murderers escape from a maximum-security facility had discussed with them a murder-for-hire plot involving her husband, a district attorney says.