World Briefs

CHINA Though it has been dismissed by a court, the country’s first legal challenge to a law limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples has galvanized many of the hundreds of young Chinese gay rights supporters who gathered at the courthouse.

TAIWAN A Mormon missionary from North Ogden has died after he was hit by a car in Taiwan while riding a bike. Mormon church officials said yesterday in a news release that 18-year-old David Smith Hampton died Tuesday near Taichung, Taiwan. He began his two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints four months ago.

SOUTH KOREANS voted in parliamentary elections that are expected to hand a decisive win to President Park Geun-hye’s conservative party, and enable her to push ahead with controversial economic reforms. Exit polls, however, indicated her party would not regain its majority in the National Assembly.

PHILIPPINES In a bustling, densely populated corner of Manila, fruit vendor Coring Gutierrez reads USD35 due from her latest water bill, more than triple what her family of six paid 15 years ago. Water was not supposed to become so expensive for Manila under a 1997 World Bank deal that privatized the seaside city’s water and sewage management.

INDONESIA Ride-hailing app Uber launches a motorbike taxi service in the Indonesian capital where Southeast Asian rivals Go-Jek and Grab are already battling for dominance. Jakarta is one of the world’s most congested cities and motorbike taxis ordered from a smartphone app have exploded in popularity in the past 18 months as a way to beat snarled traffic. “UberMotor” service would provide cheap and reliable transportation for hundreds of thousands of people.

INDIA Tiny bone fragments carry a world of significance and perhaps closure for at least one American family who lost a loved one over the mountains of India in World War II. During a solemn ceremony, U.S. military members pay final respects to what they believe may be the remains of one to two crew members from a B-24 bomber that crashed on a supply run from India to China over the Himalayan Mountains.

MIGRANT CRISIS The European Union’s president says he is concerned about an increase in the number of migrants arriving from Libya, as the EU focuses on sending people back to Turkey. EU Council President Donald Tusk said that “the numbers of would-be migrants in Libya are alarming,” and that member countries should be ready to help Italy and Malta should they call for it. More than 15,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy in March.

FRANCE’s prime minister says he’d favor a ban on Muslim headscarves in universities, prompting criticism from within his own government. In an interview with the daily Liberation, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said France should “protect” French Muslims from extremist ideology. He said the headscarf, when worn for political reasons, oppresses women and is not “an object of fashion or consumption like any other.”