World briefs

INDONESIAs military and police continue to perform abusive virginity tests on female recruits three years after the World Health Organization declared they had no scientific validity, an international human rights group said yesterday.

AUSTRALIA A senator who is British by descent yesterday became the ninth lawmaker to leave Parliament over a 116-year-old constitutional ban on dual nationals running for office that threatens to bring down the government.

VIETNAM A half century after serving in Vietnam, hundreds of U.S. veterans have a new reason to believe they may be dying from a silent bullet — test results show some men may have been infected by a slow-killing parasite while fighting in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

PAKISTAN The military says security forces have raided a militant hideout, triggering a shootout that left an army major dead in the northwest near the Afghanistan border.

SYRIA’s notoriously fragmented opposition gathering yesterday in the Saudi capital is trying to close ranks and come up with a unified vision as international efforts appeared headed toward a resolution that would preserve the rule of President Bashar Assad.

LEBANON Prime Minister Saad Hariri announced yesterday that he was putting his resignation on hold to give way for more consultations. It was a quick reversal and a likely embarrassment to Saudi Arabia, which was widely seen as having orchestrated his resignation.

GREECE Twenty international and Greek rights groups and charities called on the Greek government yesterday to end the policy of keeping migrants and refugees arriving from Turkey stuck on Greek islands.

GERMANY’s center-left Social Democrats are under pressure to halt the country’s drift toward a new election after ruling out a repeat of their outgoing coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel. The Social Democrats said after a disastrous result in Germany’s Sept. 24 election that it would go into opposition, and its leadership reiterated that stance after Merkel’s coalition talks with two smaller parties collapsed.

US The U.S. Navy says eight people who were recovered from the crash of a transport aircraft in the Pacific are in good condition and the search continues for three other missing personnel. 

VENEZUELA Authorities detained the acting president of Citgo, the state-owned oil company’s U.S. subsidiary, and five other executives for their alleged involvement in a corruption scheme, officials said Tuesday.