World briefs

SINGAPORE’s competition watchdog has fined ride-hailing giant Uber and its regional rival Grab 13 million Singapore dollars (USD9.5 million) for a merger in Southeast Asia that the agency says has driven up fares and reduced competition in the market.

INDONESIA A teenager who survived 49 days adrift at sea after the wooden fish trap he was employed to mind slipped its moorings says he ran out of food within a week and survived on fish and seawater he squeezed from his clothing.

MALDIVES strongman President Yameen Abdul Gayoom conceded that he lost Sunday’s election to his challenger, longtime lawmaker Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, in a speech broadcast live on television yesterday.

INDIA Five suspected militants and a soldier were killed in two days of fighting near the highly militarized de facto frontier that divides the disputed region of Kashmir between India and Pakistan, India’s army said yesterday.

IRAN Amid wails and vows of revenge, thousands of Iranians yesterday attended a mass funeral service for victims of a weekend attack targeting a military parade that killed at least 25 people.

YEMEN The U.N. humanitarian chief has warned that the fight against famine is being lost in Yemen, which is already facing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis with 75 percent of its 29 million people in need of assistance.

SYRIA Russia announced yesterday it will supply Syria’s government with sophisticated S-300 air defense systems after last week’s downing of a Russian plane by Syria forces responding to an Israeli air strike, a friendly fire incident that stoked regional tensions.

TANZANIA Relatives wept in grief at the mass burial in Tanzania of many of the 224 people who drowned when a ferry in capsized on Lake Victoria. 

LITHUANIA Pope Francis warned against historic revisionism and any rebirth of anti-Semitism that fueled the Holocaust as he marked the annual remembrance for Lithuania’s centuries-old Jewish community that was nearly wiped out during World War II.

ITALY yesterday tightened criteria for migrants receiving humanitarian protection as its populist government deepened its crackdown on those seeking asylum. A new law, in the form of a government decree approved by Premier Giuseppe Conte and his Cabinet, also permits authorities to suspend evaluation of asylum requests for migrants judged “socially dangerous”.