■THAILAND
Bangkok denies beatings
The Foreign Affairs Ministry yesterday denied that a Hmong refugee was severely beaten over the weekend in a camp controlled by the military as part of its efforts to forcefully repatriate 5,400 members of the ethnic minority to communist Laos. Authorities detained Joua Va Yang, who had guided a BBC team to Laos to document the plight of the Hmong in 2004, on Saturday night in Huay Nam Khao refugee camp in Phetchabun Province, ministry deputy spokesman Thani Thongpakdi confirmed. But Thani denied reports that Yang had been beaten by the military at the camp, located 250km north of Bangkok. Joe Davy of the Chicago-based Hmong Advocacy Group cited witnesses from the camp as saying Yang was severely beaten and had to receive medical treatment.
■AUSTRALIA
Sydney in the dark, again
Large parts of Sydney were left without electricity yesterday after cables supplying power to the country’s largest city went down, Energy Australia said. The fire brigade said the power outage left many people caught in elevators when it hit about the 5pm rush hour, blacking out office blocks, traffic lights and shops and causing traffic snarl-ups. “The majority of the CBD [central business district] has been affected,” New South Wales fire department superintendent Craig Brierley said. “We’ve been inundated by calls from automatic fire alarms but also there are people caught in lifts. We don’t know how many yet, but it seems like quite a few.”
■THAILAND
Couple killed in south
Suspected separatist militants shot dead a Muslim couple in the troubled south yesterday, while four insurgents and a villager were killed in other violence, police said. The couple were riding on a motorcycle to a food market in the troubled town of Pattani — one of the worst hit areas in the Muslim-majority region — when they were killed in a drive-by shooting, police said.
■CHINA
Thirteen officials punished
Thirteen officials in Henan Province have been punished after a chemical company contaminated a river with arsenic, state media reported on Sunday. A local court sentenced Liu Gaili, a former environmental protection bureau official, to two years in jail, Xinhua news agency cited the Shangqiu city government as saying. The report said 12 other officials were either sacked or given administrative punishments. The officials were punished after a section of the Dasha river was found contaminated by arsenic in August. Water quality tests showed the concentration of arsenic was nearly 900 times greater than what was deemed safe.
■INDIA
Gandhi relative detained
A state government invoked extraordinary powers on Sunday to keep the great-grandson of the country’s first prime minister in detention for up to one year for allegedly inciting violence against Muslims weeks before national elections. A political furor erupted after Varun Gandhi, 29, was caught on video at two political rallies earlier this month in the north comparing a rival Muslim politician to Osama bin Laden and threatening to cut the throats of Muslims. Gandhi belongs to the powerful Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, which has produced three prime ministers over six decades and has long promoted a secular government and tolerance for religious minorities. He is a member of the opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
■TURKEY
Ruling party loses ground
Full results from local elections show Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted party has lost political ground. The results reported yesterday by state-run TRT television still must be confirmed by the election board. TRT says the final count gives Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party 39 percent of votes cast on Sunday to fill mayoral posts and local administrations. The party had taken 46 percent in 2007 parliamentary elections. Erdogan says the results represent “a vote of confidence” in his government. His party narrowly retained its grip on Ankara and Istanbul, but lost the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir to a Kurdish party. The secular opposition won 23 percent.
■MONTENEGRO
Djukanovic ‘retains throne’
Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic retained “the throne” by shattering the opposition in Sunday’s snap poll and winning an absolute majority to govern over the next four years, local newspapers said yesterday. “Djukanovic on the throne again,” a headline in the daily Vijesti said. Pobijeda described the election result as a “triumph of [Djukanovic’s] coalition.” According to final projections by the monitoring agency CDT, Djukanovic’s bloc won 50.5 percent of the votes cast, translating to 46 out of the 81 seats in parliament. His Democratic Party of Socialists and junior partner, the Social Democratic Party, claimed five seats more than in polls 30 months ago.
■KENYA
Train crash kills 15 people
At least 15 people died after a passenger train plowed into a stationary cargo train in Mpawapwa District, reports said yesterday. Local officials said that more people were believed to be trapped in the wreckage and that the death toll could rise. The Citizen Daily said that Infrastructure Development Minister Shukuru Kawambwa blamed the accident on negligence. “The two drivers involved and the stationmasters should be arrested immediately and appropriate action taken against them,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.
■RUSSIA
Gay march at Eurovision
A gay rights group has decided to hold its annual gay pride parade on the day Moscow hosts the Eurovision Song Contest finals, even if it fails to secure an authorization, a report said. “The gay pride parade’s organizational committee decided on Sunday that the parade will be held on May 16, on the day the Eurovision contest finals are held,” Nikolai Alexeyev, leader of the Gay Russia organization, was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency on Sunday. “We will seek ways to legally hold the parade, but if we are refused, we will still march,” Alexeyev said, adding however that “we do not want to discredit Russia in the Eurovision finals and are ready for any kind of talks with the authorities.”
■FRANCE
Maurice Jarre dies at 84
French composer and three-time Oscar winner Maurice Jarre died at 84 after a battle with cancer, reports said yesterday. Jarre died on Sunday in Los Angeles, the reports said, citing Jarre’s management. The Lyon-born composer, considered a pioneer of modern film scoring, wrote the music for more than 150 films and was nominated nine times for Academy Awards, winning three for 1962’s Lawrence of Arabia, 1965’s Doctor Zhivago and 1984’s A Passage to India. A month before his death, he was awarded a lifetime achievement award at the Berlin International Film Festival, which he accepted in one of his final public appearances.
■UNITED STATES
Man kills two sisters
A man on a rampage fatally stabbed his 17-year-old sister, decapitated his five-year-old sister in front of a police officer and then turned toward his nine-year-old sister with a knife in his hand before officers shot him dead in what their chief described as “a killing field.” There was no clear motive for the events that unfolded on Saturday, the day after the five-year-old’s birthday, in a Boston suburb that is also home to Illinois Governor Deval Patrick. But there was no doubt at the carnage wrought by 23-year-old Kerby Revelus against his sisters in the two-family home they shared with their parents and grandmother. Five-year-old Bianca was killed as a cake for her birthday, which investigators believe was on Friday, sat on the kitchen table.
■COLOMBIA
Rebels to turn over remains
The country’s largest rebel group announced that it would give the remains of an official who died in its custody to his family and urged the government to return the remains of two rebel leaders. The announcement by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was published on Sunday on the Web site of Senator Piedad Cordoba, who has served as a go-between in rebel hostage releases. The FARC said it would deliver the remains of police Major Julian Ernesto Guevara to his mother “at a time and place we will announce when the situation ... permits.” Guevara was kidnapped by the FARC in November 1998. He died in FARC custody in January 2006. The FARC statement asked for the remains of rebel leaders Raul Reyes and Ivan Rios. Reyes was killed in a raid on a FARC camp in March last year.
■BRAZIL
Doctors remove spear
Surgeons successfully removed a 15cm fishing spear from the brain of a man who was struck while diving off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, doctors said on Sunday. Emerson de Oliveira Abreu apparently fired the spear, which ricocheted off rocks and penetrated his own head so deeply that only the tip was showing, family members and authorities said. Local media initially reported that Abreu was accidentally shot by a friend. Doctor Manoel Moreira told Globo TV that the it took five hours of high-risk surgery to remove the projectile from Abreu, who is doing well and is not likely to suffer major, lasting damage.
■UNITED STATES
Poison maker to protect lions
The Philadelphia-based manufacturer of a pesticide blamed for the poisoning deaths of lions in Kenya said it was taking “aggressive action” to prevent misuse of the product, halting sales to the country and trying to buy back supplies. The carbofuran pesticide is marketed by FMC Corp as Furadan. It’s used to control insects on crops. Its granular form was banned in the mid-1990s after it killed 2 million birds.
■COLOMBIA
Dad raped me: daughter
A woman has accused her father of raping her for more than 20 years and claims to have had eight children because of these rapes, local media reported, in a case recalling Austria’s Josef Fritzl. The daily El Pais de Cali has dubbed the alleged abuser Arsedio Alvarez, “the Monster of Mariquita,” for the name of the family’s home town in Tolima, in the southwest. His daughter, Alba Alvarez, now 32, was said to have finally reported her father after he allegedly started abusing granddaughters. The suspect has been questioned and detained, and claims he is innocent.
‘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
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
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