ADEN, Yemen -- Yemen's pro-government forces announced Saturday that nearly 40 members of the Houthi rebel group were killed in the ongoing fighting in the country's northeastern province of Marib.

According to a brief statement released by the pro-government Ministry of Defence, "the army units launched artillery shelling and killed a total of 40 members of the Houthi militia in Marib's northern outskirts." (Yemen-Houthi-Fighting)

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SYDNEY -- The first Confucius Institute in the Pacific island nation of Papua New Guinea (PNG) was inaugurated in the country's second largest city of Lae on Saturday.

The PNG University of Technology (Unitech) will cooperate with Chongqing Normal University based in China's southwestern Chongqing Municipality to run the program. About 300 Unitech students and staff have applied for enrollment in the institute. (PNG-Confucius Institute)

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MOSCOW -- The Moscow City Court upheld a lower court verdict of imprisonment for Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny on Saturday, but cut his jail term by more than one month.

The time Navalny spent under house arrest from Dec. 30, 2014 to Feb. 17, 2015 should be counted as part of imprisonment on a day-for-day basis, the court ruled. (Russia-Kremlin Critic-Jail Term)

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KABUL -- At least five people, including two police officers and a woman, were killed and two people wounded in three explosions, targeting three cars in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, on Saturday, the capital police confirmed.

The blasts came in the morning rush hour. The first explosion occurred roughly at 8:00 a.m. local time while the second 15 minutes later, Kabul police spokesman Ferdaus Faramarz told Xinhua. (Afghanistan-Explosion)

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WASHINGTON -- NASA scientists have received the first status report from the Ingenuity Mars helicopter on Friday, which was attached to the belly of the agency's Perseverance rover and landed on Mars on Thursday.

The downlink, which arrived at 6:30 p.m. EST (2330 GMT) via a connection through the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, indicated that both the helicopter, which will remain attached to the rover for 30 to 60 days, and its base station are operating as expected, according to NASA. (NASA-Mars-Status Report) Enditem

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