World briefs

JAPAN The former employee accused of killing 19 disabled people and injuring others at a care home in Japan moved briskly and methodically inside buildings and rooms he knew, finishing the deadliest mass attack in postwar Japan in less than one hour, officials said.

INDONESIA rebuffed appeals from distraught relatives, rights advocates and foreign governments to abandon plans to execute 14 people for drug crimes as preparations intensified at the prison island holding death row inmates.

AUSTRALIAN officials confirmed that data recovered from a home flight simulator owned by the captain of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 showed that someone had used the device to plot a course to the southern Indian Ocean, where the missing jet is believed to have crashed. More on p16

NORTH KOREA’s top diplomat for U.S. affairs told The Associated Press that Washington “crossed the red line” and effectively declared war by putting leader Kim Jong Un [pictured] on its list of sanctioned individuals. More on p12

NEPAL Thirteen people were killed and 35 others sustained injuries yesterday when a passenger bus veered off the mountain highway and plunged some 200 meters down in Dhankuta District of Nepal, some 600 kilometers east of capital Kathmandu.

INDIA Wildlife workers have rescued six rhino calves from being washed away by floodwaters that have swamped a national park in northeastern India. Torrential monsoon rains have caused widespread flooding in Assam state and forced around 1.2 million people to leave their water-logged homes. The rains have also flooded vast tracts of the Kaziranga National Park, home to the world’s largest population of the one-horned rhinoceros.

FRANCE Vacationers in the French Riviera city of Cannes have been banned from bringing big bags to the beach for security reasons in hopes of deterring a terrorist attack. Cannes Mayor David Lisnard says the restriction seeks to stop “bags that could contain explosives or weapons and allows police forces to intervene in a pragmatic way.”

SOUTH SUDAN’s army pledged to investigate allegations its soldiers raped civilians after the United Nations said it documented 120 cases of sexual violence during fighting in the capital earlier this month.