World Briefs

CHINA-NEW ZEALAND  As Chinese grew wealthier while their economy raced ahead, dairy farmers more than 6,000 miles away in verdant New Zealand felt like they’d won the lottery. Now, it’s as if they’ve have discovered the lottery ticket was invalid.

NEW ZEALAND A New Zealand zoo decided yesterday that it wouldn’t euthanize a Sumatran tiger that attacked and killed a veteran zookeeper.

SINGAPORE A Filipino nurse working in Singapore was sentenced yesterday to four months in jail for describing Singaporeans as losers on his Facebook, and subsequently providing false information to police investigators. Ello Ed Mundsel Bello, 28, pleaded guilty to a charge of promoting feelings of ill-will and hostility under the country’s sedition act, and two charges of providing false information to the police. An additional charge under the sedition act, and another for lying to the police, was also considered during sentencing.

AUSTRALIA’s new Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull indicates that he is in no hurry to sever the nation’s constitutional links to Britain by appointing an Australian president as head of state.

VIETNAM has freed a high-profile blogger who has traveled to the United States, which is pressing for more such dissidents to be released.

SIERRA LEONE An Associated Press investigation finds that weak leadership, shoddy supplies and infighting exacerbated a chaotic situation at a critical front in the battle against Ebola in Africa.

BURKINA FASO Burkina Faso’s political crisis deepens as the military insists its general must serve as head of state until the next elections while protesters clash outside the hotel where regional leaders were mediating.

S KOREA Security researchers say they found critical weaknesses in a South Korean government-mandated child surveillance app — vulnerabilities that left the private lives of the country’s youngest citizens open to hackers. Internet watchdog group Citizen Lab and German software auditing company Cure53 said they found a catalog of worrying problems with “Smart Sheriff,” the most popular of more than a dozen child monitoring programs that South Korea requires for new smartphones sold to minors. “There was literally no security at all,” Cure53 director Mario Heiderich said. “We’ve never seen anything that fundamentally broken.”

GERMANY The CEO of Volkswagen apologizes and VW customers say they felt duped after the Environmental Protection Agency reveals that the German automaker skirted clean air rules by rigging emissions tests for about 500,000 diesel cars.

IRAN said yesterday it has given samples to the U.N. nuclear agency collected by its own experts at the Parchin military site, where Western nations suspect it once worked on detonators for nuclear weapons.