INDIA: Seven people, including four students, have been arrested on charges of defaming Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a college magazine.

A former principal of Government Polytechnic College, Thrissur, four students from the Kerala state school and two others were charged with defamation and criminal conspiracy on Wednesday.

A youth group affiliated with Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party complained about a picture of him in the magazine headed “Negative faces.”

AFRICA: An international wildlife regulator says more than 20,000 elephants were poached last year in the continent.

Officials with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) said 80 per cent of the seizures were in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

But CITES, which banned the ivory trade in 1989, said that the overall poaching numbers in 2013 dropped from the previous two years due to better law enforcement.

SPAIN: The government has approved legislation to sell off 49 per cent of national aviation authority AENA and open up one of the country’s passenger rail routes to a private operator.

Public Works Minister Ana Pastor said yesterday that the government aimed to begin ending the monopoly held by the RENFE state rail company by allowing a private operator to compete on the high-speed passenger train route between Madrid, Valencia and Alicante.

ITALY: Venice’s mayor resigned yesterday, a day after being released from house arrest and resuming work under a plea deal over illegal political financing.

Giorgio Orsoni blamed a lack of support from the Democratic Party since his arrest last week in a corruption probe related to construction of underwater barriers to protect the lagoon city from flooding.

Several city council members had called for his resignation overnight.

IRISH REPUBLIC: A wheelchair-bound protester was taken to hospital yesterday after an incident at a protest against water charges in the Edenmore area of Raheny in north Dublin. About 30 people were taking part in a demonstration against the installation of water meters.

A number of groups have been staging protests in the Raheny area for the last two months, and the meter demonstrations have been going on for two weeks.

JAPAN: The government will slash corporate tax rates to shake up the economy and drive growth, officials said yesterday.

Cutting business taxes is part of the final tranche of the Prime Minister’s so-called “Abenomics” action plan, which started in early 2013.

A government panel gave Mr Abe more than 200 deregulation proposals across various sectors yesterday, including in health and agriculture.

HONG KONG: A high-speed ferry crashed into a breakwater in Macau harbour yesterday, leaving 58 people with minor injuries.

The hydrofoil was carrying 220 passengers and 13 crew members when it hit the seawall, having left Hong Kong about an hour earlier.

The boat, steered by a captain with 34 years’ experience, was travelling at 35 knots in fine weather at the time of the accident.

UKRAINE: Seven miners were killed and two others were missing when a gas explosion ripped through a coalmine in the eastern city of Kirovsk.

The blast happened before dawn on Thursday at a depth of 1,000 feet, the State Emergency Service said.

Officials said they were continuing their search for the two missing men.