World Briefs

HONG KONG issued its third-highest storm signal for the first time this year as Severe Tropical Storm Linfa approached the financial center. The Hong Kong Observatory hoisted the No. 8 Storm Signal at 4:40 p.m. yesterday, according to its website.

CHINA A Chinese journalist will be freed without charge following nine months in detention after she helped cover the Hong Kong democracy protests for a German publication, her lawyer said yesterday. Beijing prosecutors decided not to bring any charge against Zhang Miao, who was a news assistant for Die Zeit, said lawyer Zhou Shifeng, who was notified of the decision yesterday.

CHINA’s consumer inflation edged up to a still-low 1.4 percent in June, leaving room for Beijing to cut interest rates or take other steps to stimulate slowing economic growth. Inflation rose from the previous month’s 1.2 percent, driven by a 1.9 percent rise in food costs, government data showed yesterday.

MYANMAR has ratified the chemical weapons convention, bringing the treaty a step closer to its goal of acceptance by every country in the world.

SYRIA More than 4 million Syrians have fled abroad since the 2011 outbreak of civil war, the largest number from any crisis in almost 25 years, the United Nations said yesterday. A recent wave of people leaving Syria and an update of Turkish statistics confirmed the tragic milestone, according to the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR. The agency said 7.6 million additional people have been displaced from their homes within Syria by the fighting.

UGANDA Police yesterday detained a former prime minister who last month announced he would seek the presidency amid a political dispute with the country’s long-serving leader. Amama Mbabazi (pictured) was arrested as he traveled from the Ugandan capital, Kampala, to a town in eastern Uganda where he planned to consult with his supporters.

BOSNIA Twenty years ago Saturday, Bosnian Serb troops led by Gen. Ratko Mladic carried out Europe’s worst carnage since the end of World War II, a massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica that a United Nations court calls a genocide.

USA The South Carolina House opens debate over the Confederate flag, deliberating a proposal that could remove the banner from the Capitol grounds, possibly before the end of the week.

BOLIVIA Pope Francis has begun celebrating an open-air Mass in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz. Hundreds of thousands have packed into Christ the Redeemer square and the streets beyond. Overnight, several thousand slept in square to get a spot close to the front. Francis arrived in the Andean nation yesterday after three days in Ecuador.