World Briefs

CHINA The prospect of sitting in a Hyatt Regency ballroom in Florida and listening to Jack Ma, founder of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, deliver the keynote for the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition’s conference this month did not sit well with Michael Kors’ general counsel. In fact, Ma’s imminent speech — and the IACC’s April decision to welcome Alibaba as a new member — so incensed the U.S. luxury brand that it severed its longstanding connection with the Washington-based industry group.

NORTH KOREA North Korea shows off a spruced-up capital to droves of international journalists and visitors who have been brought in for some major political theater — the country’s first ruling party congress in 36 years, with Kim Jong Un himself taking center stage. What exactly is in store is anyone’s guess. North Korea has announced little more than the start date: today.

PHILIPPINES A senator filed a corruption complaint alleging that the front-runner in the presidential race, Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, hired 11,000 non-existent employees whose salaries cost the government 708 million pesos (USD15 million) in 2014. The poll will take place on Monday.

INDONESIA, Malaysia and Philippines agreed yesterday to run coordinated patrols to boost maritime security following the kidnappings at sea of Indonesians by suspected Abu Sayyaf militants. Foreign ministers and military chiefs of the three countries held talks in Indonesia’s ancient royal capital city of Yogyakarta, hashing out the details of joint patrols to protect shipping in the waters between their border areas.

AUSTRALIA’s most dangerous known Islamic State movement operative had been killed in a U.S. airstrike in Iraq, the government said. The United States had confirmed that Neil Prakash, also known as Abu Khaled al-Cambodi, was killed in Mosul on Friday, Attorney-General George Brandis said. The 24-year-old Australian citizen of Cambodian and Fijian heritage converted from Buddhism in 2012 and traveled to Syria a year later.

NEPAL A Canadian man will leave Nepal after a court failed to hear his appeal of the revocation of his work visa over critical social media posts, his lawyer says.

SYRIA Pro-opposition activists say an airstrike has hit a refugee camp in northern Syria, near the border with Turkey, killing and wounding dozens of people displaced from the country’s devastating civil war. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says a camp in near Sarmada, in the northwestern Idlib province was struck yesterday.

NASA Earthlings are in for a treat Monday as Mercury makes a relatively rare transit of the sun. The solar system’s smallest, innermost planet will resemble a black round dot as it passes in front of our big, bright star. The last time Mercury crossed directly between the Earth and sun was in 2006, and it won’t happen again until 2019 — and then, until 2032. NASA says the event occurs only about 13 times a century.