World briefs

CHINA Investigators in eastern China said they have not found high levels of pollution around a school where an explosive state television report in April said hundreds of kids had fallen sick with illnesses including leukemia.

SINGAPORE More than 40 people have been infected locally by the Zika virus in Singapore, but most have fully recovered, officials said yesterday. The ministry said in a statement that the patients were “not known to have traveled to Zika-affected areas recently, and are thus likely to have been infected in Singapore. This confirms that local transmission of Zika virus infection has taken place.”

INDONESIA A would-be suicide bomber’s explosives failed to detonate in a packed church in western Indonesia during Sunday Mass yesterday, and he injured a priest with an axe before being restrained, police said.

RUSSIA A fire swept through a Moscow printing plant warehouse on Saturday, killing 17 migrant workers from Kyrgyzstan, Russia’s emergency services said. A representative of the Kyrgyz community said the victims were all young women trapped in a dressing room while changing into their work clothes.

UZBEKISTAN’s government issued an unusual statement yesterday announcing the hospitalization of President Islam Karimov, who has ruled the former Soviet republic in Central Asia for more than 25 years. The statement gave no details about the nature of the illness suffered by the 78-year-old president.

ZIMBABWE President Robert Mugabe warned against an Arab Spring type of revolution, as Zimbabwe police said they arrested 67 people following a violent protest that rocked the capital, Harare. Police used batons, tear gas and water cannons in running battles with anti-government demonstrators, despite a court order that the protest could take place.

POLAND’s foreign minister yesterday lent his support to a Franco-German proposal for a European Security Council. The idea was floated by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and French counterpart Jean-Marc Ayrault in June to address internal and external security and defense issues facing the European Union.

US The Marine Corps’ new commander for the Pacific, Lt. Gen. David Berger, said he aims to advance his predecessor’s work helping allies and partners develop their skills storming beaches and moving forces ashore.

BRAZIL Senators on Saturday questioned the last two witnesses summoned by the defense for President Dilma Rousseff in her impeachment trial for allegedly breaking fiscal rules in the management of the federal budget.