■CHINA
Mine flood toll rises to 30
The death toll from a flooded mine in the south has risen to 30 after search teams recovered more bodies, state media reported yesterday. The teams have now found 23 bodies of the 29 miners still missing in the Nadu coal mine in Guangxi Province’s Zhuang region, Xinhua news agency reported, citing rescue officials. Seven people had been previously confirmed dead and 21 people were rescued when the mine flooded late last month. Nearly 3,800 lives were lost in The country’s notoriously dangerous coal mines last year, official figures show, but independent labor groups believe the actual death toll is much higher as many incidents are covered up.
■CAMBODIA
Thais occupy second temple
The government says Thai soldiers are occupying a second temple site on the countries’ border, a new twist in an ongoing armed standoff that nearly led to clashes between the neighbors. Major Sim Sokha of the border protection unit said yesterday that about 70 Thai soldiers have been occupying the 13th century Ta Moan Thom temple since Thursday. The site is located on a northwestern region of border with Thailand. A Thai foreign ministry spokesman says he was not aware of the latest confrontation.
■THAILAND
Bombs hit southern towns
Seven small bombs exploded at shops and restaurants in southern tourist hubs injuring two people, officials said yesterday, while two people were killed in separate attacks. Two bombs hit Hat Yai and five exploded in Songkhla within hours of each other late on Saturday. Both towns are in Songkhla Province, which borders the southern provinces beset by a bloody separatist insurgency. The bombs hit 7-Eleven stores, a restaurant, a tea shop and a police checkpoint, with the first blasts heard at about 9pm. Prat Boonyavongvirot, permanent secretary at the health ministry, said that two women aged 16 and 18 were hit by shrapnel but were expected to recover from their injuries.
■PHILIPPINES
Northern mayor killed
An unidentified gunman shot dead a town mayor in a northern province who was playing mahjong with friends, police said yesterday. Arthur Cabantac, 55, mayor of Agno town in the northern province of Pangasinan, died on the way to hospital after the attack on Saturday evening. Senior Superintendent Isagani Nerez, provincial police director, said the assailant shot at Cabantac through an open window in the house of his neighbor in the village of Poblacion East. The mayor suffered four gunshot wounds. None of the other three players were hurt, he added. The mayor’s security escorts were not with him during the shooting. Nerez said investigators had no suspects yet and were looking into political and personal motives for the killing.
■JAPAN
Escalator mishap injures 20
At least 20 people were injured when an escalator at a Tokyo convention center jerked to an abrupt halt yesterday, knocking down dozens, police and paramedics said. Around 60 people fell backwards on the 30m escalator when it suddenly shook and stopped moving at the Tokyo Big Sight convention hall, Tokyo Fire Department official Masafumi Shigeta said. The seriousness of the injuries appeared to have been limited because people fell onto one another. Paramedics took 10 people to a nearby hospital for treatment of injuries, including a possible broken leg, he said.
■MONTENEGRO
Karadzic critic slain in bar
A 51-year-old man was beaten to death in a bar after comments about arrested Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic, a local newspaper reported on Saturday. The Vijesti newspaper said the man had said that Karadzic, who was at large for 12 years before his capture last month, should have been arrested sooner. Another patron in the bar, a 36-year-old Karadzic follower then beat him so severely that the man died two days later. The attacker has been arrested, the paper said. Karadzic, born in Montenegro, is now awaiting legal proceedings at the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague on 11 different war crime and criminal charges.
■TURKEY
Three detained over collapse
Police detained three people on Saturday in connection with the collapse of a school dormitory on Friday that killed 18 female students, state Anatolian news agency said. Twenty-seven people were also injured when a gas explosion destroyed the three-story building in Balcilar village in the Toros mountain range, some 340km south of Ankara. Anatolian said paramilitary gendarmerie forces had detained three local education officials from the village and were questioning them. It was not clear specifically why they were being held. About 50 people, female students and teachers, were in the building when the gas explosion occurred.
■SWEDEN
Gays celebrate in Stockholm
With rainbow flags on buildings and buses for more than a week, it was hard to miss Stockholm’s gay pride festival. On Saturday, about 45,000 people showed up for the finale, a downtown march. Some 450,000 people lined the route, police and organizers said. The annual march was held for the first time in 1977. “I’ve never seen it before,” said Leila Hammouda, a 39-year-old Stockholmer whose father comes from Algeria. “I’m sure they would never permit this in Algeria.” More than 150 groups, including some representing police officers, members of the armed forces and Straight Women in Support of Homos, or SWISH, marched.
■EGYPT
Islamist leaders detained
State security forces detained 10 leaders of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood on Saturday in the Nile Delta city of Mansura, the movement said. Most of the detainees were members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s administrative office in Dakahlia governorate, of which Mansura is the capital, the movement said in a statement on its Web site. The government has banned the fundamentalist Islamic group, but the Muslim Brotherhood is the most active political opposition movement in Egypt. It has one-fifth of the 454 seats in parliament, its members running as independents in the 2005 elections to circumvent the party’s illegality.
■JORDAN
Dozens of kidney donors die
At least 35 people have died over the past three years after selling their kidneys to patients mostly in Egypt and Pakistan, an official was quoted as saying yesterday. The victims were among 120 citizens who were “lured by gangs of brokers” into selling their kidneys for about 3,000 dinars (US$4,300) each, Jordan Kidney Patients’ Society chairman Mohammad Ghneimat was quoted as saying by the Al-Rai newspaper. The victims belonged to poor families from the Palestinian refugee camps of Baqaa and Hussein, he said.
■MEXICO
Migrants survive boat fire
An official said a boat carrying at least 40 Cuban migrants caught fire off Cancun but all of the passengers reached shore safely. Police detained seven of the migrants, but the rest fled into the resort town. Regional Deputy Attorney General Luis Canche Aquino said investigators suspect Friday’s fire may have been set deliberately. He said on Saturday the detained migrants told police they had left Havana in a makeshift boat, but were later picked up by a luxury vessel. Authorities suspect the migrants were picked up by smugglers, who are increasingly involved in taking Cuban migrants to the US through Mexico. The route is becoming popular among Cubans trying to avoid detection by the US Coast Guard.
■UNITED STATES
Boys bounce for 24 hours
Eight boys in Michigan bounced for 24 hours last week in an effort to set a world record. The boys began the attempt on Friday morning at the Bounce-a-Lot entertainment center southwest of Detroit in Flat Rock. They bounced two at a time in shifts in an inflatable castle. Ten-year-old Mason Brott says the bouncing wasn’t as tough as he thought it would be. Guinness World Records must still authenticate the record, a process that could take months. The boys, ages 8 to 11, decided to try to beat the bouncing record of 19 hours and 24 minutes, set nearly two years ago.
■UNITED STATES
Boy shoots mother dead
Police say a 12-year-old Arizona boy shot and killed his mother with a handgun after an argument. Cochise County sheriff’s spokeswoman Carol Capas says deputies were called to a home on Friday near Douglas, Arizona, on the Mexican border. They found Sara Madrid, 34, shot multiple times. She died at a hospital. The boy was booked into the county juvenile detention center on a charge of first-degree murder. Capas says the boy was at home with his mother, stepfather and a sibling when an argument broke out. The parents left, and when they returned the boy opened fire on his mom. No one else was hurt. Capas said she does not know what the argument was about.
■BRAZIL
Confessed killer bragged
A Brazilian man accused of killing and dismembering a British teenager and stuffing her torso in a suitcase bragged to his brother in a text message that she was “in the bag,” state police said on Saturday. Mohamed D’Ali Carvalho Santos, whom police and his lawyer said has confessed to killing 17-year-old Cara Marie Burke, sent the message to his brother Bruce Lee, who lives with their mother in London, said a police investigator who declined to be identified in line with departmental rules. The message, written in English and accompanied by a smiling face symbol, read: “the bitch is in the bag,” the investigator said. It was found in Santos’ cellphone, which he used to photograph Burke’s severed head after he allegedly placed it on top of her torso along with a bloody butcher knife, the investigator added. Shortly after his arrest last Thursday, the 20-year-old Santos tried to bribe police to let him go, offering officers 70,000 reals (US$45,000) which he said he would get from his mother, inspector Jorge Moreira da Silva told reporters. The attempted bribery was recorded by police and broadcast on Friday night on national television. In a jailhouse interview on Friday, Santos told reporters that he did not remember most of what happened the night Burke died because he was high on cocaine.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in