World Briefs

CHINA Flooding in three central Chinese provinces leaves at least 13 people dead and 13 others missing and disrupts the lives of nearly 1 million people, state media report. Heavy rains and flooding struck Sichuan, Guizhou and Hunan provinces starting Sunday, causing widespread damage, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

S KOREA A former South Korean prime minister will be sent to prison after the country’s top court upholds her bribery conviction.

PAKISTAN The military says airstrikes in a northwestern tribal region have killed 43 militants.

AUSTRALIA Five young men are the largest single group of suspected jihadis to attempt to leave Australia for Syria and Iraq. But they were stopped twice on consecutive days last week by counterterrorism officials at Sydney International Airport.

AUSTRALIA Veteran actress Maggie Kirkpatrick, who played a violent and sadistic warden nicknamed “The Freak” in a cult Australian soap opera set in a women’s prison, is convicted of molesting a 14-year-old psychiatric hospital patient in her home more than 30 years ago.

INDIAN authorities detain and quickly release two key Kashmiri separatist leaders ahead of talks between Indian and Pakistani security advisers, while a third remains under house arrest.

PHILIPPINES Two Philippine coast guard personnel who were threatened with beheading escape from their Abu Sayyaf extremist captors when hundreds of troops storm the militants’ jungle base in the country’s south.

RUSSIAN customs officials have drafted a bill to make the smuggling of banned foreign foods an offense punishable by a prison sentence. In retaliation to Western sanctions, Russia last year banned certain food imports from the EU, the U.S. and a few other countries. President Vladimir Putin this month ordered the destruction of confiscated contraband food, with hundreds of tons of fruit and cheese steamrolled and burnt in a public display of the ban enforcement.

BURUNDI Without a public announcement that it would happen, Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza was sworn in for a third term amid political turmoil in which more than 100 people have died and tens of thousands have fled the country.

USA Officers arrested at least nine people and deployed tear gas amid protests in St. Louis over the death of a black 18-year-old who was fatally shot by police after he pointed a gun at them, the city’s police chief said.