World Briefs

CHINA  A fire at a residential building in central China killed seven people and injured 12 others, a local government said yesterday. The fire broke out late Saturday night in Wuhan city in the building’s electric cable well, the Wuhan government’s information office said on its microblog. The seven residents died after they inhaled a huge amount of smoke from the burning of the electric cables, the statement said.

CHINA  A warehouse containing fireworks exploded in northern China yesterday, killing at least three people and injuring more than a dozen others, state media reported. The morning explosion happened in Ningjin county in Hebei province, which borders Beijing, and shattered nearby windows and even those of a flour factory about 1km away, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Photos on the news website 163.com appeared to show the warehouse’s roof had blown off.

MYANMAR  Several hundred workers in Myanmar rallied yesterday for a higher minimum wage despite a warning by factory owners that the demand might put them out of business.

MALAYSIA’s embattled leader faces a fresh blow as his wife is also probed over large cash deposits.

AFGHANISTAN  Police say 12 civilians have been killed in a roadside bomb explosion in the country’s east.

PHILIPPINE police killed five suspected car thieves and robbers in a gun battle yesterday north of Manila in an ongoing anti-crime crackdown, officials said.

IRAN Negotiators at the Iran nuclear talks plan to announce today that they have reached agreement on a historic deal capping nearly a decade of diplomacy that would curb the country’s atomic program in return for sanctions relief, diplomats told The Associated Press yesterday.

PARAGUAY Pope Francis put into practice his insistence that the world’s poor not be left on the margins of society by visiting a flood-prone slum outside Asuncion yesterday to offer residents a word of encouragement on the final day of his three-country South American tour.

USA Legions of people clap, cheer and cry as South Carolina lowers the Confederate battle flag. But as the euphoria of the moment fades, questions over what exactly that accomplished for race relations in the United States — other than the elimination of a painful symbol of the past — begin to arise.

SPAIN  The number of thrill-seeking revelers at the sixth day of the San Fermin festival’s running of the bulls in Pamplona swelled to more than 3,000 but no one was gored yesterday.