WORLD BRIEFS

FRANCE/Retirement reform closer

Under pressure from the government, the French Senate voted Friday to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62, a victory for President Nicolas Sarkozy after days of street rage, acrimonious debate and strikes that dried up the supply of gasoline across the country. The vote all but sealed passage of the highly unpopular measure, but it was unlikely to end the protests. Sarkozy made overhauling the money-losing pension system a centerpiece of his project to modernize France. Friday's vote came after some 140 hours of debate, with senators approving the bill 177-153. The measure is expected to win final approval by both houses of parliament next week.

TAIWAN/Typhoon kills seven

Record rains from a powerful typhoon caused massive mud- and rockslides in Taiwan that buried a Buddhist temple and trapped vehicles on a highway, where one bus carrying 19 Chinese tourists was missing Friday. The mudslide at the temple killed seven people, and overall, 25 people were missing as Typhoon Megi swept toward southern China, where landfall was expected late Friday or Saturday. The storm earlier killed 26 people in the Philippines. Megi dumped a record 45 inches of rain in Taiwan's Ilan county over 48 hours. It had winds of 90 mph.

JAPAN/Mass graves at WWII site

Two mass graves that may hold the remains of up to 2,000 Japanese soldiers have been discovered on the island of Iwo Jima, one of the bloodiest and most iconic battlesites of World War II, a report and officials said Friday. Japanese searchers discovered 51 remains in two areas listed by the U.S. military after the war as enemy cemeteries, one of which could contain as many as 2,000 bodies, Japan's Kyodo News agency said Friday. The discovery would be one of the biggest breakthroughs in decades toward finding the bodies of roughly 12,000 Japanese who remain missing and presumed dead after the 1945 battle on the island, renamed Iwoto by the Japanese government.