World briefs

BANGLADESH A special Bangladesh tribunal sentences an opposition politician to death for his role in the deaths of people and other crimes during the nation’s 1971 independence war against Pakistan. M.A. Zahid Hossain Khokon, of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, is a fugitive and believed to be in Sweden with his son and daughter.

INDIA The doctor who conducted sterilization procedures after which 13 women died in central India is arrested, but insists he didn’t do anything wrong — even though he said he used to perform up to 10 times more surgeries a day than allowed. Dr. R.K. Gupta, who had been hiding since Saturday’s operations, was arrested at a relative’s home near Bilaspur city, said Dr. S.K. Mandal, the chief medical officer of Chhattisgarh state. More on p12

PAKISTAN’s military says it has successfully test-fired an intermediate-range missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. The military says the Shaheen-II missile, also known as Hatf-VI, with a range of 1,500 kilometers, was launched from an undisclosed location. Its impact point was somewhere in the Arabian Sea, which is part of the Indian Ocean.

THAI police ban imports of a book they viewed as insulting the country’s monarchy, as a crackdown against anti-royalist campaigns intensifies after a coup earlier this year. The book, “A Kingdom in Crisis: Thailand’s Struggle for Democracy in the Twenty-First Century,” has contents that defame the monarchy and “will affect the kingdom’s stability, order or the good morality of the people,” national police chief Gen. Somyot Poompanmoung said in an order.

AFGHANISTAN President Ashraf Ghani is making his first state visit today to neighboring Pakistan, long blamed by his predecessor for harboring militants, in hopes of finding a way to revive peace talks with the Taliban. Mutual suspicion still haunts the two countries’ relations — and cross-border shelling is common. But Ghani’s visit, his third trip abroad after recently visiting Saudi Arabia and China, appears part of his plan to recalibrate Afghanistan’s relations with its neighbor as others pressure it over the militants hiding within its borders.

THAILAND’s royal palace says the country’s 86-year-old king remains hospitalized and is suffering from an infected colon, a month after he underwent surgery to remove his gallbladder.

NEW ZEALAND-BRAZIL  A convicted pedophile and murderer from New Zealand managed to earn money while in prison, book his escape under his birth name, and flee to Brazil while on temporary release before authorities finally caught up with him. Phillip John Smith, who sexually abused a neighbor’s son and killed the boy’s father, might still have been on the run if somebody — police won’t say who — hadn’t spotted him in Brazil after he got a two-day jump on his pursuers.

UKRAINE says the security situation in rebel-held areas in the east has steadily worsened as separatist fighters move closer to demarcation lines separating them from government forces. National Security and Defense Council spokesman Andriy Lysenko said yesterday that the Russian army is massing troops, including air defense units, near the border — claims Moscow has denied.