IN BRIEF (Page 12)

Thailand

Police unable to reclaim complex

Thai police and a prominent protest leader failed to reach a deal on Sunday to reopen state offices and roads in Bangkok that have been occupied for months by protesters seeking to overthrow Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. Talks with Buddhist monk Luang Pu Buddha Issara, a protest leader, failed to free up an occupied government complex in the north of the capital as a third day of a security operation designed to retake sites occupied by protesters drew to a close.

Tunisia

Militants kill at least 4 people

Armed militants operating a fake checkpoint in northwest Tunisia killed four people and wounded four others early on Sunday, the Interior Ministry said. Authorities said four men blocked the road near Jendouba, just 50 kilometers from the Algerian border. They stopped a vehicle and killed two of its occupants, including a prison guard, and wounded two others.

Nepal

Plane with 18 goes missing

A Nepal Airlines plane with 18 people on board flying in bad weather was missing on Sunday and feared to have crashed in Nepal's mountainous west, officials said. The plane left from the resort town of Pokhara after making an unscheduled fuel stop, but contact was lost a few minutes later, said Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal official Ram Hari Sharma.

AP-Xinhua-Reuters

(China Daily 02/17/2014 page12)