World briefs

CHINA The Hong Kong Monetary Authority bought the local currency for the first time since the current trading band was imposed in 2005, after the exchange rate sank to the weak end of its permitted range. The de facto central bank purchased HKD816 million (USD104 million) yesterday.

VIETNAM Courts handed down lengthy prison terms against two activists as authorities stepped up their crackdown on dissent. The two were given nine and seven years respectively for attempting to overthrow the government and spreading anti-state propaganda in two separate trials. 

AFGHANISTAN The Taliban stormed a government compound in central Afghanistan, triggering an hours-long gunbattle that killed 15, including three top local officials.

INDONESIA’s conservative Aceh province will no longer allow canings for violations of Shariah law to be carried out in public, its governor said, apparently in response to international condemnation of the caning last year of two men for gay sex.

SPAIN The crown prince of Saudi Arabia was on an official visit yesterday to longtime commercial ally Spain, where activists are criticizing past and possible future sales of military equipment to the kingdom.

SYRIA’s U.N. ambassador says it will facilitate a visit by international chemical weapons inspectors at “any point they want” in the town where a suspected gas attack occurred last weekend. Speaking in New York yesterday, Bashar Ja’afari said an inspection team from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is on its way to Damascus and that visas are being provided.

FRENCH President Emmanuel Macron declared yesterday that strikes and protests will not prevent him from overhauling the nation’s economy — comments that came as train workers, hospital staff, students, retirees, lawyers and magistrates are challenging his economic vision.

ALGERIA Bodies of the 257 people killed in Algeria’s worst aviation disaster were being identified at a military hospital yesterday and returned to families for burial, while officials provided no new information about the crash.