World Briefs

USA Former “Two and a Half Men” star Charlie Sheen (pictured) says he has the HIV virus. In an interview yesterday on NBC’s “Today,” the 50-year-old Sheen says he tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS.

INDONESIA Two Indonesian newlyweds have been arrested on accusations they plotted to kill a man the woman said had raped her a week before her marriage, and police said yesterday the couple ate the victim’s genitals after the man was killed.

CANADA-CHINA Anastasia Lin is an actress who believes her outspoken advocacy of human rights in her native China played a big role in her winning bid in May to become Canada’s contestant in the Miss World pageant. But then the host country for the global beauty pageant was changed from Australia to China, and now the Communist country appears to have singled Lin out among the contestants and is stalling over her visa application.

KOREASNorth Korea yesterday sent back a South Korean man it held for about six weeks for entering the country illegally, South Korean officials said. The 48-year-old, who was sent by the North through the border village of Panmunjom, is currently being investigated by South Korean officials over why he entered the North without government permission, said an official from Seoul’s Unification Ministry, who didn’t want to be named, citing office rules.

INDIA’s Supreme Court orders a state government to remove a wood-burning crematorium from near the Taj Mahal to protect the monument from pollution damage.

AUSTRALIA-DENMARK The European Broadcasting Union says Australia has been invited to submit an entry to next year’s Eurovision Song Contest, taking place in Stockholm. Spokesman Jon Ola Sand says in a statement the glitzy song fest “has the potential to evolve organically into a truly global event,” adding Australian attendance “is an exciting step in that direction.” Australia competed in the 60th edition in Vienna in May as a one-off celebration because of its “long tradition of broadcasting the show.”

GREECE A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of at least 6.1 hit the western Greek island of Lefkada yesterday, killing two people and causing extensive damage to infrastructure and buildings on Lefkada and nearby islands.

RUSSIA-SYRIA Russia’s defense minister says Russian warplanes have fired cruise missiles on militant positions in Syria’s Idlib and Aleppo provinces. Sergei Shoigu also told a briefing conducted for President Vladimir Putin yesterday that bombers hit Islamic State positions in Raqqa and Der-ez-Zor.

GERMANY’s top security official has downplayed possible links between arrests near the western city of Aachen and the investigation of the Paris attacks. Police said SWAT teams arrested a man and two women in the town of Alsdorf yesterday after authorities received a tip from the public that the man might be Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect sought in the attacks. Police later arrested two more persons in the town. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told reporters in Berlin that it wasn’t clear how the people might be linked to the Paris attacks, if at all, “but sadly it’s not the man that everyone hoped it would be.”