IN BRIEF (Page 12)

Italy

Teams recover 194 bodies

Italian search teams have recovered 194 bodies after a migrant boat sank off the southern island of Lampedusa last week, with divers working to bring up as many as possible from the wreck ahead of expected bad weather, officials said on Monday. The boat, carrying around 500 mainly Eritrean and Somali migrants, capsized and sank on Thursday, throwing hundreds into the water. Only 155 survivors were rescued and more than 300 are feared dead.

Brazil

Canada 'spied on ministry'

Canada spied on communications at Brazil's Mining and Energy Ministry, according to Canadian intelligence documents revealed late on Sunday by Globo television. Documents leaked by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, purportedly from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, show a detailed outline of the Brazilian ministry's communications, including phone calls, e-mail and Internet traffic. Earlier disclosures by Snowden that the US spied on the same ministry, as well as on President Dilma Rousseff and her aides, have strained US-Brazilian ties.

India

32 killed by lightning strikes

At least 32 people, including nine children, were killed over the weekend by lightning strikes in the eastern Indian states of Bihar and Jharkhand, officials said on Monday. "About 24 people, including seven children, were killed on Saturday and Sunday by bolts of lightning across Bihar," State Disaster Management Minister Renu Kumari Kushwaha said.

United States

Capture legal, says Kerry

US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday insisted the capture of an alleged al-Qaida operative in Libya in a US raid was legal, after Tripoli demanded answers about the "kidnap". Abu Anas al-Libi, who was indicted in connection with the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and has a $5 million FBI bounty on his head, was captured on Saturday.

Pakistan

2 health workers die in bombing

A bomb that exploded near a polio vaccination team in the volatile northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar on Monday killed at least two people, and possibly as many as six, in the latest in a string of attacks against health workers. Islamist violence has been on the rise in Pakistan, undermining Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's efforts to tame the insurgency by opening peace talks with the Taliban.

AFP-Reuters-AP

(China Daily 10/08/2013 page12)