World briefs

CHINA and Japan resumed high-level talks on maritime issues this week, in a sign that they want to improve relations badly strained in recent years by territorial disputes and wartime historical issues. Senior ministry officials met for two days in China’s eastern city of Qingdao to exchange views on issues in the East China Sea and maritime cooperation, China’s official Xinhua News Agency said yesterday.

CHINA The former deputy chief of the Chinese agency in charge of steering the world’s second-largest economy goes on trial accused of taking bribes worth almost USD6 million, a court says, as a campaign against official corruption intensifies. More on p11

JAPAN says it has stepped up sanctions against Russia over the unrest in Ukraine to be in line with other Group of Seven nations before their upcoming meeting in New York. The new sanctions include banning some Russian banks from issuing securities in Japan and tightening restrictions on arms exports to Russia over its support for the separation of Crimea from Ukraine, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said.

AUSTRALIA A terror suspect shot dead after he stabbed two Australian counterterrorism police officers had his passport canceled recently on national security grounds, top police officials say. More on p12

CAMBODIA announces that it will sign a deal with Australia this week to resettle people who were denied asylum there. Cambodia’s Foreign Ministry said the agreement will be signed Friday by Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison and Cambodian Interior Minister Sar Kheng, but gave no details.

PAKISTAN A suspected U.S. drone fires four missiles at a vehicle carrying Uzbek and local militants in the country’s northwestern tribal region near the Afghan border, killing 10 of them, two Pakistani intelligence officials say. The missiles hit the moving vehicle when it was about 500 meters away from the Afghan border in the Pakistani border town of Datta Khel in a militant-stronghold of North Waziristan, they said.

INDONESIA Men and women caught having homosexual sex could be publicly caned in Indonesia’s conservative Aceh province if an Islam-inspired draft law is approved this week. Lawmaker Moharriadi Syafari said a majority of provincial lawmakers supported criminalizing gay sex.

UK The wife of a British aid worker held hostage in Syria by the Islamic State group says she has received an audio message from him pleading for his life. Alan Henning, a 47-year-old former taxi driver, was kidnapped in December in Syria, shortly after crossing into the country from Turkey in an aid convoy.

SWEDEN Edward Snowden was among the winners yesterday of a Swedish human rights award, sometimes referred to as the “alternative Nobel,” for his disclosures of top secret surveillance programs. The former National Security Agency contractor split the honorary portion of the 2014 Right Livelihood Award with Alan Rusbridger, editor of British newspaper The Guardian, which has published a series of articles on government surveillance based on documents leaked by Snowden.

UKRAINE Mortar fire struck an apartment block in the rebel-held east Ukraine city of Donetsk overnight, yet another violation of a cease-fire between government forces and pro-Russian insurgents. While both sides said Tuesday they saw progress on the ground in fulfilling an agreement to pull back heavy artillery weapons from the front-line, yesterday Kiev accused the rebels of violating a cease-fire imposed Sept. 5.