Combined briefs

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INDONESIA

U.S., Russia to discuss Syria, Iran

The United States and Russia plan to conduct their first high-level talks since sealing a deal to secure and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons and the onset of an apparent warming between Iran and the West. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov planned to meet today to discuss both issues on the sidelines of an economic summit in Indonesia. They will be comparing notes on progress made since they negotiated the Syria agreement last month.

MINNESOTA

Runaway boards plane without ticket

A 9-year-old runaway went through security, boarded a plane at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport without a ticket and flew to Las Vegas, an airport spokesman said Sunday. Security officials screened the Minneapolis boy at the airport shortly after 10:30 a.m. Thursday after he arrived via light rail, Metropolitan Airports Commission spokesman Patrick Hogan said. The boy then boarded a Delta flight that left for Las Vegas at 11:15 a.m. The flight crew became suspicious midflight because the boy was not on their unattended minors list. The crew contacted Las Vegas police, who met them upon landing and transferred the boy to child protection services, Hogan said. Minneapolis police Sgt. Bill Palmer said officers talked to the family after Las Vegas police contacted them.

PERU

Bus plunges into ravine, killing 19

A bus ran off a remote road Sunday in the Andes and plunged into a ravine, killing two children and 17 adults. Eighteen people are injured, police said. Regional police commander Col. Julio Prado said the cause of the accident is under investigation. The accident happened about 4:20 a.m. in a farming community in the Acoria district of the Huancavelica region about 152 miles southeast of Lima. Government figures show that 5,435 people died and 13,520 were injured in bus crashes between September 2008 and December 2012.

RUSSIA

Cigarette lighter comes in handy

Russian President Vladimir Putin ceremoniously lit the Olympic flame on Red Square on Sunday, but the four-month relay to Sochi for the Winter Games got off to a rocky start when one of the torches went out. The Olympic flame, which was lit a week ago in Greece and flown to Moscow earlier Sunday, kept burning in a cauldron on Red Square. The glitch occurred when a torch bearer ran through a long passageway leading into the Kremlin, which apparently created a wind tunnel, extinguishing the flame. A man standing along the route, most likely part of the presidential security service, pulled out a cigarette lighter and reignited the torch.

CALIFORNIA

Gas prices drop in past two months

The average U.S. price of a gallon of gasoline dropped 14 cents over the past two weeks. The Lundberg Survey of fuel prices released Sunday said the average price of a gallon of regular is $3.38. Midgrade costs an average of $3.58 a gallon, and premium is $3.71. Diesel was down 4 cents at $3.92 gallon. Of the cities surveyed in the Lower 48 states, St. Louis has the nation’s lowest average price for gas at $3.01. San Francisco has the highest at $3.88.

SPAIN

Shepherds guide sheep through Madrid

Shepherds led a flock of 2,000 sheep through Madrid on Sunday in defense of ancient grazing, droving and migration rights increasingly threatened by urban sprawl and modern agricultural practices. Since at least 1273, shepherds have had the right to use droving routes that wind across land that was once open fields and woodland before Madrid mushroomed into the great metropolis it is today. Every year, a handful of shepherds defend that right in Spain’s capital city. Following an age-old tradition, they paid 25 maravedis — coins first minted in the 11th century — to city hall officials to use the crossing.

MEXICO

No injuries reported after earthquakes

A series of earthquakes rattled southern and central Mexico Sunday, forcing the evacuation of dozens of villages that sit on hillsides loosened by a deadly tropical storm last month. More than a dozen quakes centered along the coast of Guerrero state began around 8:30 a.m. and continued for at least three hours, ranging in strength from barely perceptible to 5.2, according to Mexico’s seismological institute. Authorities reported no deaths or significant damage. State spokesman Victor Torres Ruiz said authorities were evacuating between 100 and 200 hamlets, most of less than 150 people, where the heavy rains of Tropical Storm Manuel left unstable slopes on surrounding hills.