World Briefs

CHINA A Chinese court has accepted a case brought by a social organization against oil giants ConocoPhillips China and China National Offshore Oil Corp. over oil spills in northern China in 2011. It is the first case accepted since China changed its law to allow NGO lawsuits against heavy polluters.

N KOREAN officials warned the United States that another war on the Korean Peninsula would leave no Americans alive to sign a surrender document as the country marked yesterday’s anniversary of the armistice that ended fighting in the Korean War.

AUSTRALIA  An Australian nurse who says he was forced by Islamic State militants to work as a medic in Syria did not apply for bail when he appeared in a court in his hometown of Melbourne yesterday charged with supporting a terrorist group. Adam Brookman, 39, voluntarily returned to Australia from Turkey on Friday.

YEMEN  Shiite rebels and their opponents battled across several provinces yesterday after the start of a five-day humanitarian pause in the Saudi-led air campaign, Yemeni officials said. Coalition planes carried out flyovers over Yemen but did not drop munitions, the officials said. Ground fighting erupted in multiple provinces within minutes of the start of the unilateral cease-fire late Sunday.

SOMALIA A suicide bomber rammed a truck rigged with explosives into the blast walls around one of Mogadishu’s most secure hotels, killing 15 people including a Kenyan diplomat and a Chinese embassy guard, Somalian and Chinese officials said.

ETHIOPIA  President Barack Obama urged Ethiopia’s leaders yesterday to curb crackdowns on press freedom and political openness as he began a visit that human rights groups say legitimizes an oppressive government. “When all voices are being heard, when people know they are being included in the political process, that makes a country more successful,” Obama said during a news conference with Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn.

USA The State Department has taken Malaysia and Cuba off its blacklist of countries failing to combat modern-day slavery, leaving the U.S. open to criticism that politics is swaying the often-contentious rankings in its annual human trafficking report. Thailand, downgraded with Malaysia last year because of abuses in its fishing industry, remained on the blacklist. Critics contend that Malaysia’s upgrade is related to its participation in a U.S.-backed trade agreement among Pacific Rim countries. Thailand is not part of the proposed agreement.

USA Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is likening the agreement on an Iranian nuclear deal to “marching the Israelis to the door of the oven,” a reference to the Holocaust. The former Arkansas governor made the tweet Sunday, a day after first making the comparison when denouncing President Barack Obama for his role in the agreement with Tehran.