06:26 The world this week

»  A small fire at Kenya's main airport swelled into a roaring inferno Wednesday that destroyed part of East Africa's largest aviation hub and hampered air travel across the continent.Firefighters were desperately short of equipment in an area where the county government apparently lacks a single working fire engine. Crews needed hours to get the
flames under control and at one point resorted to a line of officers passing water buckets. The early morning blaze gutted the arrival hall, forcing authorities to close the entire airport and airlines to cancel dozens of flights. The flames also charred airport banks and foreign exchange bureaus. No serious injuries were reported.

» In a rare diplomatic rebuke, President Barack Obama on Wednesday canceled his Moscow summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The decision reflected both U.S. anger over Russia's harboring of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden and growing frustration within the Obama administration over what it sees as Moscow's stubbornness on other key issues, including missile defense and human rights. Obama will still attend the Group of 20 economic summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, but a top White House official said the president has no plans to hold one-on-one talks with Putin while there. Instead of visiting Putin in Moscow, the president will add a stop in Sweden to his early-September travel itinerary.

» Al-Qaida's senior leadership has a diminished ability to direct global terror operations but the threat from loosely linked affiliates and individuals radicalized by its "infectious ideas" is becoming more sophisticated, U.N. experts said Wednesday. In a report to the Security Council, the panel monitoring U.N. sanctions against al-Qaida pointed to the growing sophistication and reach of terrorist propaganda on the Internet. It also pointed to recent attacks in Boston, London and Paris that highlight the "persistent challenge" of terrorist acts committed by individuals or small groups and the emergence of a strong al-Qaida presence in Syria's civil war. "Individuals and cells associated with al-Qaida and its affiliates continue to innovate with regard to targets, tactics and technology," the report said.

» North Korea said Wednesday it is lifting a ban on operations at a jointly run factory park shuttered since Pyongyang pulled out its 53,000 workers in April amid tensions with South Korea, and the rivals agreed to meet next week for talks meant to restart the complex. The agreement revives hope for the resumption of production at the Kaesong complex, the last remaining symbol of inter-Korean cooperation from an earlier period of detente. The industrial park combined South Korean initiative, capital and technology with cheap North Korean labor. It was also a rare source of hard currency for North Korea, though the economically depressed country chafed at suggestions that it needed the money Kaesong generated.

» Two top Shanghai judges and another court official caught on a videotape apparently taking prostitutes to hotel rooms after dining with a contractor have been stripped of Communist Party membership and will likely lose their jobs. The case, exposed by a disgruntled defendant in a civil case, has aggravated public distrust of the court system and shed new light on continued wrongdoing by officials despite the Chinese leadership's vow to crack down on all corruption.

» Chinese police have detained a prominent leftist supporter of disgraced high-flying politician Bo Xilai who had urged people to protest against Bo's upcoming trial, underlining government nervousness about the case. Song Yangbiao, a reporter for the magazine the Time Weekly, was detained on Sunday on charges of "picking quarrels and causing trouble", according to friends and supporters, apparently after using his Sina Weibo microblog to denounce the trial and call for an uprising to oppose it.

» Iran's incoming President Hassan Rouhani on Tuesday offered an olive branch to the United States in talks on Tehran's disputed nuclear program, raising hopes of progress after years of stalemate. Rouhani, seen in the West as a relatively moderate leader, told his first news conference since taking the oath on Sunday that he was "seriously determined" to resolve the dispute and was ready to enter "serious and substantive" negotiations.

» Tens of thousands of Tunisians crowded the streets of downtown Tunis on Tuesday to demand the transitional government's ouster, in the largest opposition protest since the country's political crisis began two weeks ago. The secular opposition, angered by two assassinations in its ranks and emboldened by the army-backed toppling of Egypt's Islamist president, is trying to topple Tunisia's Islamist-led government and dissolve the Constituent Assembly.

» Japan's government believes radiation-contaminated water has been leaking into the Pacific Ocean from the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant for the past two years, an industry ministry official told reporters on Wednesday. Earlier, the official said an estimated 300 tons of contaminated water was leaking into the ocean per day from the Fukushima nuclear plant.

» Egypt's political crisis entered a tense phase on Wednesday after international mediation efforts collapsed and the army-installed government repeated its threat to take action against supporters of deposed President Mohamed Mursi. Both sides called their supporters on to the streets on Thursday, while Mursi supporters in two protest camps in Cairo strengthened sandbag-and-brick barricades in readiness for any action by security forces.

» China fined six companies, including Mead Johnson Nutrition Co, Danone and New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra, a total of $110 million following an investigation into price fixing and anti-competitive practices by foreign baby formula makers. The other three penalised were Abbott Laboratories, Dutch dairy cooperative FrieslandCampina and Hong Kong-listed Biostime International Holdings. The fines, which follow a four-month antitrust probe by the NDRC, coincide with separate pricing investigations into 60 foreign and local pharmaceutical firms as well as companies involved in gold trading. Those probes have yet to conclude.

» The United States updated sanctions on Myanmar on Wednesday to maintain a ban on importing rubies and jade amid a relaxation of curbs on U.S. trade with the Southeast Asian nation, American officials said. President Barack Obama's executive order continues a gradual lifting sanctions aimed at encouraging political and economic reforms since the military government that had run the country also known as Burma for five decades stepped aside in 2011.

» Four Chinese ships spent more than 24 hours in what Japan sees as its territorial waters, prompting a Japanese protest to China on Thursday at a time when Japan has been signaling its desire for a summit. Relations between the world's second- and third-largest economies have been strained for months, largely because of a dispute over a group of islands in the East China Sea.

» About 6,000 people, including U.S. Ambassador John Roos, attended Friday's ceremony after offering silent prayers for the victims of the U.S. atomic bombings — on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, and on Hiroshima three days earlier. The bombings prompted Japan's surrender in World War II. The Hiroshima blast killed an estimated 140,000 people, and another 70,000 died in Nagasaki.