World briefs

CHINA The dengue virus has killed six people and infected more than 23,000 in southern China’s worst outbreak of the mosquito-transmitted disease in about two decades, officials said yesterday. The Guangdong health agency said on its website that 19,631 of the 23,146 cases reported as of Monday were in the provincial capital of Guangzhou. It said more than 1,000 new infections were being registered in Guangdong every day, with other provinces reporting a few dozen cases.

KOREAS Warships from the rival Koreas exchange warning shots after a North Korean ship briefly violated the disputed western sea boundary, a South Korean defense official said. The shots were fired into the sea and there have been no reports of injuries and damage to the ships of either side.

MYANMAR Rights groups in Myanmar say the president has pardoned more than a dozen political prisoners and former military intelligence officials as part of a pledge to free people jailed for political crimes by the end of the year.

MYANMAR A foundation in Myanmar says three people who were on board a Thai rescue helicopter that disappeared 10 days ago walked to safety.

AUSTRALIA’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott says he hopes that legal hurdles can be cleared quickly so that Australian special forces troops can begin their assistance role in Iraq. Australian F/A-18F Super Hornet jet fighters have flown their first missions over Iraq since Cabinet ministers approved their combat deployment on Friday last week. The jets have yet to find an Islamic State group target to fire at.

PAKISTAN A suspected U.S. drone strike on a Taliban compound in a Pakistani tribal region bordering Afghanistan yesterday killed at least six militants, officials said.

SYRIA The Islamic State group is about to capture the Syrian border town of Kobani, Turkey’s president said yesterday, as outgunned Kurdish forces struggled to repel the extremists with limited aid from U.S.-led coalition airstrikes.

USA The U.S. Supreme Court appeared likely yesterday to side with a prison inmate who says his Muslim beliefs require him to grow a 12 millimeter beard. Thirty-nine-year-old Gregory Holt claims a right to grow a beard under a federal law aimed at protecting prisoners’ religious rights.

USA Gay and lesbian couples are getting legally married in the Southeast for the first time, crossing a threshold in a conservative region long opposed to same-sex marriages. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Monday to turn away appeals from a handful of states means marriage bans are unconstitutional in Virginia and similar bans in West Virginia and North and South Carolina should fall as soon.

SWEDEN Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano of Japan and U.S. scientist Shuji Nakamura win the Nobel Prize in physics for the invention of blue light-emitting diodes, a breakthrough that spurred the development of LED technology used to light up computer screens and modern smartphones. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences says their invention is just 20 years old, “but it has already contributed to create white light in an entirely new manner to the benefit of us all.” More on p14

RUSSIA  President Vladimir Putin is celebrating his 62nd birthday in the wilderness of Siberia as supporters from across Russia create tributes in his honor.

KENYA Criminal Court prosecutors say Kenya is refusing to comply with repeated requests for information that could form evidence against the country’s president, who is charged with instigating deadly postelection violence in 2007-2008. Prosecution attorney Benjamin Gumpert told a hearing yesterday that prosecutors and Kenyan authorities have reached a deadlock in efforts to gather potential evidence against President Uhuru Kenyatta such as phone records and tax returns.