World briefs

PHILIPPINES A bomber who killed two people and wounded 35 at a town festival in the southern Philippines offered fruit to people in hopes of evading suspicion when he abandoned the bag that also contained the bomb, a Philippine military commander said.

CAMBODIA Fourteen Cambodian opposition activists have been freed from long prison terms, their pardons coming as the latest in a series of releases engineered by Prime Minister Hun Sen after his party’s election sweep last month.

JAPAN Police are investigating the deaths of four elderly patients at a hospital in heat-struck central Japan after the air conditioning failed in their rooms. 

RUSSIA  President Vladimir Putin yesterday scaled back plans to lift women’s retirement age by eight years to 63 as he offered concessions to a package of pension reforms that have hit his approval ratings.

IRAN’s intelligence minister has boasted on state television about his country’s successful recruitment of a former Cabinet-level official from a “hostile” country, signaling Tehran’s first acknowledgment of compromising an arrested Israeli official.

IRAQ Seven people were killed yesterday in a suicide car bombing claimed by the Islamic State group in a former stronghold of the jihadists in western Iraq, a security official said.

YEMEN Security officials say a suspected al-Qaida attack on a checkpoint in a southern province has killed five soldiers and wounded four others.

GREECE A fire broke out on a ferry sailing to the island of Crete from mainland Greece yesterday, forcing hundreds of passengers to don life vests and wait on the deck for hours before they were safely evacuated.

AUSTRIA Judges in Austria say a lower court’s authorization for police to raid the offices of the country’s domestic intelligence agency was illegal.

BRAZIL President Michel Temer announced that he’ll deploy the military to restore order in a state at the heart of the Venezuelan migrant crisis, as new data showed a surge in killings that meant the state now has the highest homicide rate in the country.

MEXICO President Enrique Pena Nieto has again defended the widely criticized original investigation of the 2014 disappearance of 43 students, but concedes that his administration has failed to bring the country peace.