World briefs

NEPAL Search teams in army helicopters rescued dozens of stranded foreign trekkers and recovered more bodies of victims of a blizzard and avalanches in Nepal’s northern mountains yesterday, raising the death toll to 27. About 70 people were still missing along or near the popular Annapurna trail, said Ganga Sagar Pant of the Trekking Agencies Association of Nepal, and the death toll there was expected to rise.

S KOREAN activists vow to continue to launch balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border into North Korea, days after their campaign triggered gunfire between the rival Koreas.
NORTH KOREA  has circulated a draft U.N. resolution praising its own human rights record in a rare effort to counter the international community’s growing condemnation of the way it treats its people.

AFGHANISTAN Two senior leaders of the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani network have been arrested in eastern Khost province, the Afghan intelligence service said yesterday, claiming a major blow to the Pakistan-based militant group. Anis Haqqani, a brother of the network’s leader, and Hafiz Rashid, who allegedly helped equip suicide bombers and select targets for attacks, were detained Tuesday in a special operation, the National Directorate of Security said in a statement.

SERBIAN police say they have found the drone that flew an Albanian nationalist banner over a soccer stadium in Belgrade, igniting a brawl on the field and fueling simmering political tensions between Balkan rivals Serbia and Albania.

USA President Barack Obama vows his administration will respond in a “much more aggressive way” to cases of Ebola in the United States and warns that in an age of frequent travel the disease could spread globally if the world doesn’t respond to the “raging epidemic in West Africa.”

USA Facebook is launching a tool that lets users notify friends and family that they are safe during or after natural disasters. The tool, called “Safety Check,” will be available worldwide to the social network’s 1.32 billion users on computers and mobile devices.