WORLD BRIEFS

NORTH KOREA: Military chief removed from duties

Kim Jong Un's top military official has been removed from all posts because of illness, state media said Monday. One analyst speculated that a more likely reason for Ri Yong Ho's departure is Kim's desire to put his own mark on the government he inherited from his father late last year. The decision to relieve Ri of his duties was made at a Workers' Party meeting Sunday, the official Korean Central News Agency said. Ri was vice marshal of the People's Army and chief of the military's General Staff. He had been at Kim Jong Un's side since the young man emerged as Kim Jong Il's successor in 2010.

NEPAL: Bus skids, killing 39 Hindu pilgrims

An overcrowded bus carrying Hindu pilgrims skidded off a slippery highway in the south Sunday, killing 39 people. Police official Gyan Bikram Shah said some people were riding on the roof. The driver lost control, and the bus plunged into a flooded irrigation canal, Shah said. Most of those on board were believed to be Indian nationals from the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh on an annual pilgrimage to Hindu temples.

RUSSIA: 3 lift off on way to space station

A Soyuz craft lifted off into the morning skies over Kazakhstan on Sunday, carrying three astronauts on their way to the International Space Station, where they will start preparing for a frenzy of incoming traffic. Japan's HTV3 cargo ship will dock with the space station next week, the first of nine craft making contact with the orbiting satellite over a 17-day span. U.S. astronaut Sunita Williams, Russian cosmonaut Yury Malenchenko and Japan's Akihito Hoshide will travel two days before reaching three colleagues already at the permanent space outpost. Williams, 46, born in Euclid, Ohio, and raised in Massachusetts, is on her second mission and will further extend the record for the longest sojourn in space for a female astronaut. Of Indian-American heritage, she spent 195 days at the space station in 2006-07.