World Briefs

CHINA A coal mining accident in southern China has left 10 dead and five injured, local authorities said yesterday. The Pu’an county government in Guizhou province said on its website that 56 of those in the mine had safely reached the surface and rescue work was continuing. It wasn’t clear whether any miners remained unaccounted for.

PAKISTAN’s military says its security forces have arrested a “foreign-sponsored” group of militants who wanted to disrupt this week’s Independence Day celebrations by carrying out a suicide attack in the southern city of Karachi.

PAKISTAN A top government official in eastern Pakistan says he has fired a provincial intelligence chief and three senior police officers for failing to act against a gang that blackmailed the families of children it sexually abused.

AFGHANISTAN Authorities recover the corpses of four men kidnapped in eastern Afghanistan last week, while at least eight others are newly abducted.

JAPAN A U.S. Army helicopter crashed while landing on a Navy ship during training yesterday off Japan’s southern island of Okinawa, injuring seven people and damaging the aircraft, officials said. The H-60 helicopter made a hard landing on the USNS Red Cloud cargo vessel around 30 kilometers east of Okinawa, U.S. Forces Japan said in a statement, adding that the cause was under

VIETNAM doubles the trading band of its currency to allow it to weaken following an unexpected devaluation of the Chinese yuan.

INDONESIA’s president replaces key economic Cabinet ministers with the aim of speeding up infrastructure spending to revive sputtering growth and stabilize the sliding rupiah.

PHILIPPINES Abu Sayyaf extremists behead a kidnapped village leader and threaten to kill two other hostages in the southern Philippines if a ransom is not paid.

INDIA Six months after India boasted that its tiger population was growing fast, conservationists yesterday said 41 big cats had already died this year and worried that the country was not doing enough to save them.

NEW ZEALAND is considering changing its flag. The public was encouraged to come up with ideas, and submitted more than 10,000 designs. A government-appointed panel has winnowed those down to 40 finalists.

IRAN-SYRIA  Heavy rebel shelling and government airstrikes hit around Syria’s capital, killing at least 16 people and wounding scores more just hours before the arrival of Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, activists and state media say.

GREECE Details of Greece’s latest bailout package were being pored over across Europe yesterday as Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras insisted the agreement with creditors would put “a definitive end” to the country’s economic uncertainty.