World briefs

CHINA Six people died and 21 others were missing after a landslide hit a village in southwestern China, Chinese state media reported yesterday. The official Xinhua News Agency said 77 houses collapsed or were buried in the landslide Wednesday night in the village of Yingping in Guizhou province. It said 21 people were injured.
CHINA says it will keep responding to U.S. military surveillance flights off its coast, rejecting American claims that one of Beijing’s fighter jets acted recklessly in intercepting a U.S. Navy plane last week. Defense Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun said yesterday that China’s military would closely monitor U.S. flights and adopt appropriate measures to ensure the country’s security.

USA An American freelance journalist held hostage and threatened with death by Islamic militants wanted to tell the world through his writing about oppressed people in the Middle East, his mother said in a video. Steven Sotloff, 31, was last seen in August 2013 in Syria. He was threatened with death by Islamic State militants on a video released last week unless the U.S. stopped air strikes on the group in Iraq. The same video showed the beheading of fellow American journalist James Foley.

JAPAN China’s government yesterday called on Japan to “break clean with militarism” after Tokyo confirmed that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent a note earlier this year to a ceremony honoring more than a thousand World War II-era war criminals praising their contributions.

AUSTRALIA Qantas Airways Ltd. yesterday posted a record 2.8 billion Australian dollar (USD2.6 billion) loss, reflecting a profit-draining battle with its smaller rival Virgin Australia and aircraft write downs. The loss for the financial year ended June 30 is the largest the former state-owned airline has posted in its 94-year history. It made an AU$1 million profit in the previous year.

MALAYSIA A sprawling undersea search area for a missing Malaysian airliner in the southern Indian Ocean could be extended farther south based on new satellite analysis, only weeks before the multimillion dollar, yearlong sonar hunt for wreckage is due to begin, officials said yesterday. Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said analysis of a failed attempted satellite phone call from Malaysia Airlines to Flight 370 “suggests to us that the aircraft might have turned south a little earlier than we had previously expected.”

SYRIA The Islamic State group killed more than 150 troops captured in recent fighting for a string of military bases in northeastern Syria, shooting some and slashing others with knives in the past 24 hours in the latest mass killing attributed to the extremists, activists said yesterday.