World Briefs

CHINA’s manufacturing was weak in June and employers cut more jobs, two surveys showed yesterday, in a new sign the world’s second-largest economy is struggling to emerge from a slump. HSBC Corp. said its purchasing managers’ index stood at 49.4, largely unchanged from May’s 49.2 on a 100-point scale on which numbers below 50 show activity contracting. A separate index by an industry group, the Chinese Federation for Logistics & Purchasing, was unchanged from May’s 50.2 on a similar 100-point scale.

CHINA A bus carrying a group of South Koreans fell off a highway bridge yesterday afternoon in northeastern China, killing 7 South Koreans, the Chinese driver and a Chinese guide, the official Xinhua News Agency said. South Korean officials said the 26 South Koreans on the bus were part of a 140-person delegation of mainly South Korean government employees.

CHINA-TURKEY China is expressing its displeasure with Turkey’s complaints about restrictions on worship and fasting by minority Chinese Uighur Muslims during the holy month of Ramadan. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said yesterday that Beijing had demanded that Ankara clarify the matter after the Turkish Foreign Ministry on Tuesday said Turkey’s “deep concerns” about the restrictions were relayed to the Chinese ambassador.

TAIWAN The father of an American who was badly burned in a fire at a Taiwan water park says the family is anxious about how the young man will fare in the next few days. Roger Haas of Mont Vernon, New Hampshire, said his son Alex Haas, 26, is fighting for his life after 90 percent of his body and his lungs were burned. He said the family faults the park management for the fire last Saturday that killed one person and burned hundreds more.
PAKISTAN’s government says the brutal heat wave that hit the port city of Karachi and the country’s southern province of Sind in June killed 1,250 people before subsiding. A government statement on the latest death toll from the heat wave was handed to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif yesterday during a high-level meeting in Karachi, the Sindh provincial capital.

N KOREA opens a new terminal building at Pyongyang’s international airport, underscoring an effort to attract more tourists and spruce up the country ahead of a celebration of a major anniversary of the founding of its ruling party in October.

JAPAN Police search the apartment of the man who set himself on fire on a high-speed bullet train, killing himself and another passenger, as officials seek clues to his motive.

RUSSIA-UKRAINE Russian gas company Gazprom halts supplies to neighboring Ukraine after the collapse of pricing talks, company official says.

SOUTH SUDAN’s army has burned people alive, raped and shot girls, and forced tens of thousands from their homes. The scorched earth campaign is apparently aimed at driving civilians out of the rebel-controlled parts of an oil-rich state, according to Human Rights Watch. South Sudan’s military is trying to depopulate the rural areas of Unity state through violence and hunger, said the group. The tactics, which include the alleged burning of grain stocks and the looting of life-sustaining property like cattle, are believed to be part of efforts to drain the rebels of their support base.

USA A fire that destroyed a black church in South Carolina was not the work of an arsonist, a federal law enforcement source said yesterday. Preliminary indications are that the fire at the Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church in Greeleyville was not intentionally set and was not arson, the source said. The blaze was reported late Tuesday as storms moved through the area. It gutted the church. No one was believed to be inside at the time.