World briefs

CHINA Up to eight people were stabbed in an apparently random attack in the southern city of Guangzhou. The official Xinhua news agency said seven people were slashed in the city’s Tianhe district yesterday evening. The Sina news website put the number of those hurt at eight. The reports said the assailant was also injured and taken to a hospital. There was no immediate word on a motive for the attack, although Sina quoted eyewitnesses as saying the man appeared to be drunk. Police were investigating.

THAILAND Three months after overthrowing Thailand’s last elected government, this Southeast Asian nation’s junta leader is stepping out of his army uniform for good — to take up the post of prime minister in a move critics say will only extend his time at the helm and consolidate the military’s grip on power.

JAPAN Police say the death toll from rain-triggered landslides on the outskirts of Hiroshima city has risen to 39, with 51 people still missing. Search efforts continued yesterday, a day after a series of landslides crushed dozens of houses, burying residents underneath them.

AUSTRALIA Prime Minister Tony Abbott yesterday used the killing of American journalist James Foley to bolster his government’s case for contentious counterterrorism reforms that have been rejected by some Islamic leaders. Abbott described the video recorded beheading of Foley by a masked Islamic State extremist with an apparent English accent as “despicable.”
INDONESIA Police investigating an American couple suspected of killing the woman’s mother at a resort hotel on Indonesia’s Bali island say the three had a disagreement over who was paying for the rooms, but that a motive for the crime has not been established. Heather Mack and her boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, have been declared suspects in the killing of Mack’s 62-year-old mother, Sheila von Wiese-Mack, whose body was stuffed into a suitcase.

CAMBODIA Flooding in Cambodia has killed at least 45 people since last month, officials say. About 11,500 families have also been forced from their homes by the flash floods along the Mekong River since July 30, the National Committee for Disaster Management said.

BRAZIL A newly strengthened domestic workers’ law, passed as a constitutional amendment last year and strengthened this month, aims to extend some of Brazil’s generous labor protections to the more than 6 million maids, nannies, eldercare givers, gardeners and caretakers who work in private homes. Many now enjoy benefits such as paid transportation to and from work, paid vacation days and an annual “13th month” pay bonus that have long been sacrosanct for other Brazilian workers.

UKRAINE Parts of eastern Ukraine were wracked by fierce fighting yesterday as government troops sought to snatch back territory from separatist rebels, while a Russian convoy of over 200 trucks carrying what Moscow says is humanitarian aid to the hard-hit city of Luhansk began to make tentative steps toward its destination.