World Briefs

CHINA A two-story building collapsed into rubble province while workers were trying to prop up the second floor during renovations in central China’s Henan province, killing 17 construction workers and injuring 23, officials and reports said Saturday.

CHINA A cult leader in southern China accused of selling toxic food, swindling followers and seducing dozens of women with promises of supernatural powers has been convicted of rape and fraud and sentenced to life in prison, a court said. Wu Zeheng, founder of the Huazang Zongmen cult, was sentenced Friday in Zhuhai City Intermediate People’s Court, and fined 7.15 million yuan (USD1.13 million).

FRANCE-CHINA French President Francois Hollande hopes to use a state visit to China to boost difficult climate negotiations a month before a U.N. conference in Paris aimed at slowing global warming. Hollande says he intends to launch a bilateral appeal with Chinese President Xi Jinping “to make the climate conference a success.”

BANGLADESH Police said yesterday that they were investigating the possibility a local radical Islamic group was behind two attacks on publishing houses in the capital this weekend that left a publisher of secular books dead and another critically wounded. Faisal Arefin Deepan was hacked to death and three other people wounded in fresh attacks in Bangladesh’s capital that were claimed by Muslim radicals. The banned group Ansarullah Bangla Team is the main focus of an investigation into Saturday’s attacks, Munirul Islam, a senior police detective, told reporters.

GREECE Rescue workers and volunteers have recovered four more bodies believed to be from refugee smuggling boats that sank near the Greek island of Lesbos.  The bodies of two men, one woman and a young boy were found early Sunday washed up on beaches in the Skala area of northern Lesbos — the stretch that has seen the heaviest traffic of asylum-seekers trying to get into Europe from Turkey.

ROMANIA  A Romanian doctor said yesterday the number of deaths from a horrific nightclub fire and stampede in Bucharest is expected to rise ‘significantly’ because so many of the injured have severe burns. Ioan Lascar, a doctor at the Floreasca Emergency Hospital, made the comment as the deaths of two more people brought the overall toll to 29. At least 180 people were injured in the blaze, and over 140 were still hospitalized yesterday. Witnesses say the fire erupted after a spark on stage from a heavy metal pyrotechnics show ignited foam decor.

BAHAMAS Searchers have found wreckage in 4,570 meters of water east of the Bahamas, and now a remotely operated deep ocean vehicle will be sent in to see whether it’s the cargo ship El Faro that vanished a month ago. The 241-meter El Faro vanished Oct. 1 with 33 crewmembers on heaving seas during Hurricane Joaquin.