World briefs

PAKISTAN vowed yesterday to work to prevent non-nuclear states from gaining the technology that would put them on the path to acquiring nuclear weapons — even though both Islamabad and neighbor New Delhi have defied non-proliferation treaties to become competing nuclear powers.

MYANMAR Clean-up work has begun as aftershocks continue to rattle villages near Myanmar’s biggest city a day after a 5.1 magnitude earthquake injured more than two dozen people and shook homes and temples. The epicenter of Monday night’s quake was about 70 kilometers northwest of Yangon.

THAI authorities say they have seized 21 rhinoceros horns smuggled from Ethiopia worth almost USD5 million. The bags carrying the horns were discovered Friday in a random customs search at Bangkok’s main airport. The bags’ owners fled as officers searched their bags and have not been apprehended.

ETHIOPIA The death toll has risen to 72 after Saturday’s collapse of a mountain of garbage in a landfill outside Ethiopia’s capital. Many victims were women and children as makeshift homes inside the Koshe landfill were buried in debris. It is not clear how the collapse occurred.

BURUNDI Reports of mutilated corpses are again emerging as Burundi’s political crisis continues, a UN expert on the East African nation says. Such corpses were seen in 2015 and early 2016 but reports have resumed in recent months. In many cases neither victims nor suspected perpetrators could be identified.

EGYPT’s ousted president Hosni Mubarak was ordered to be freed from detention on Monday, according to the prosecutor who signed his release order. The decision ends nearly six years of legal proceedings against Mubarak and seems certain to revive the ongoing debate over whether the goals of the 2011 uprising that ended his reign were ever realized.

GERMANY Ground staff at Berlin’s two airports walked off the job for the second consecutive day yesterday in a wage dispute, again forcing the cancellation of most flights to and from the German capital. 

SPAIN’s Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis said Scotland will be “at the back of the queue” if it wants to become a member of the European Union if it decides to leave the United Kingdom.

IRELAND has mounted a major search off the County Mayo coast after a sea rescue helicopter with four crew members crashed overnight in the Irish Sea. Coast Guard director Eugene Clonan says one crew member has been found and is hospitalized in critical condition, while hopes are fading of finding the other three personnel following yesterday’s crash.