World Briefs

AFGHANISTAN A strong earthquake in northern Afghanistan is felt across much of South Asia, shaking buildings from Kabul to Delhi, cutting power and communications in some areas and caused more than 150 deaths, mainly in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistani officials said that at least 147 people were killed and nearly 600 others wounded across the country, while Afghan officials said 33 people were killed and more than 200 wounded.

CAMBODIA Two members of Cambodia’s opposition party are beaten up outside the National Assembly by protesters demanding that the deputy opposition leader step down as parliamentary vice president.

PAKISTAN-INDIA Twelve years ago, a deaf and mute 11-year-old girl crossed the Indian border into Pakistan. Yesterday she flew home to a warm and emotional welcome. Wearing a red tunic, her head loosely covered with a matching scarf, the girl — now a 23-year-old woman who had been given the name Geeta — waved to the scores of people who had gathered at the New Delhi airport to greet her.

BANGLADESH Police in Bangladesh arrest four suspects in the killing of an Italian aid worker, and say the alleged gunmen confessed to being hired to attack “a white man” in order to destabilize the impoverished South Asian nation.

AUSTRALIA A 60-year-old man has been found two weeks after he disappeared in crocodile habitat in Australia’s tropical wilderness, police said Sunday. Garry Amey was taken to Cairns Base Hospital on Saturday for treatment for dehydration and sunburn, police said in a statement.

FRANCE It’s official: Ham, sausage and other processed meats can lead to colon, stomach and other cancers — and red meat is probably cancer-causing, too. While doctors have long warned against eating too much meat, the World Health Organization’s cancer agency gave the most definitive response yet yesterday about its relation to cancer — and put processed meats in the same danger category as cigarettes or asbestos.

POLAND took a decisive turn to the right in its parliamentary election Sunday, tossing out the centrist party that had governed for eight years for a socially conservative and Euroskeptic party that wants to keep migrants out and spend more on Poland’s own poor. An exit poll showed the conservative Law and Justice party winning 39 percent of the vote, enough to govern alone without forming a coalition.

VATICAN CITY  Catholic patriarchs, cardinals and bishops representing five continents have issued a 10-point appeal to climate negotiators in Paris to approve a “transformative” and fair, legally binding agreement that sets global temperature limits and decarbonization goals to save the planet from climate-induced catastrophe.

ISRAEL The Israeli army says its forces shot a Palestinian who tried to stab an Israeli soldier near a sensitive holy site in the West Bank city of Hebron. The army would not elaborate on the condition of the Palestinian. The soldier was unharmed. The army says the stabbing attack took place yesterday near a site known to Jews as the Cave of the Patriarchs and to Muslims as the Ibrahimi Mosque, the traditional burial spot of the biblical Abraham and his family.