World briefs

CHINA The Defense Ministry rejects U.S. accusations that a Chinese fighter jet’s intercept of a U.S. Navy surveillance aircraft off the southern Chinese coast was dangerous, and blames Washington for mounting large-scale and frequent close-in reconnaissance operations.

INDIA Two Indian soldiers and at least four insurgents were killed in two separate gunbattles in India’s portion of Kashmir over the weekend, an army spokesman said yesterday. A daylong battle with a group of rebels yesterday left four insurgents and one soldier dead in Kupwara district, said N.N. Joshi, the spokesman.

IRAQ Bombings in Baghdad and the northern city of Kirkuk kill at least 42 people in Iraq as the government investigates a deadly attack on a Sunni mosque the day before that has heightened sectarian tensions amid a fragile political transition.
LIBYA Two unidentified airstrikes targeting Islamist militia positions in Libya’s capital kill 15 fighters and wound 30. A senior militia leader accused Egypt and the United Arab Emirates of being behind the attacks on their posts.

SYRIA Islamic State fighters captured a major military air base in northeastern Syria yesterday, eliminating the last government-held outpost in a province dominated by the extremist group, activists and state media said. The jihadis launched their long-anticipated offensive last week to seize the sprawling Tabqa airfield, located some 45 kilometers from the extremists’ stronghold in the city of Raqqa.

QATAR The Gulf nation of Qatar is hitting back at suggestions that it supports the Islamic State extremist group, saying that “determined, collective action” is needed to end sectarian violence gripping Iraq and Syria. The energy-rich OPEC member has come under renewed scrutiny over its ties to militants, including the Palestinian Hamas and Syrian rebel groups.

USA A 6.0-magnitude earthquake caused significant damage in California’s northern Bay Area early yesterday, sending at least 70 people to a hospital, igniting fires, knocking out power to tens of thousands and sending residents running out of their homes in the darkness.

USA President Barack Obama is sending three White House officials to the funeral service of the 18-year-old whose death in a police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked days of racial unrest.

UKRAINE’s president announced plans yesterday to boost his country’s defense spending by an estimated 50 percent as government forces seek to overpower pro-Russian separatists in the east. President Petro Poroshenko pledged to spend an extra 40 billion hryvnia (USD3 billion) by 2017 during a speech marking Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.