World Briefs

CHINA has cut the amount banks are required to hold on reserve in an attempt to inject more money into its slowing economy. The People’s Bank of China said it is reducing the reserve requirement by half a percentage point to ensure adequate liquidity in the financial system and free up more funds for lending.

MALAYSIA Former leader Mahathir Mohamad has quit the ruling Malay party, saying it has been hijacked by embattled Prime Minister Najib Razak to protect his own interests. Najib has come under pressure to resign after documents leaked last July showed more than USD700 million was channeled into his private bank accounts.

THAILAND Police said yesterday they will have to tighten security on an eastern island after four French tourists were brutally assaulted, including two women who were raped. The attack raises fresh concern about tourist safety in Thailand, which hosted a record 29 million visitors last year. Police had the five Cambodian suspects in the attack on Koh Kut reenact the crime, a standard procedure in Thai justice.

IRAN Moderates have won a majority in parliament and a top clerical body charged with selecting the next supreme leader, dealing a major blow to hard-liners in the first elections held since last summer’s landmark nuclear agreement with world powers.

USA Voters in the four states to hold 2016 presidential primaries and caucuses thus far have handed out just a fraction of the delegates it takes to win the Democratic and Republican nominations. But when a dozen states vote on Super Tuesday [tomorrow, Macau time], nearly half the delegates needed to win the Republican nod and more than one-third required to win the Democratic one are at stake. Each of the remaining major candidates has a “best-case scenario” for a day that’s likely to provide some decisive moments in the 2016 race for the presidency.

USA Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev passed the U.S. citizenship test and denied terrorism links just months before he and his brother detonated two pressure cooker bombs that killed three people at the race’s finish line. The revelations were made in hundreds of heavily redacted Department of Homeland Security documents provided to The Boston Globe.

VATICAN One of Pope Francis’ top advisers acknowledges he had heard that an Australian Catholic school teacher who serially abused students might be involved in “pedophilia activity” in the 1970s, during an extraordinary public hearing of an Australian investigative commission just a few blocks from the Vatican. Australian Cardinal George Pell, who testified via videolink from Rome to the Royal Commission in Sydney, also conceded that the Catholic Church “has made enormous mistakes” in allowing thousands of children to be raped and molested by priests.