■CHINA
Fireworks truck explodes
A truck carrying gunpowder to a fireworks factory exploded, killing four people, destroying three vehicles and tearing up chunks of the highway, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. At least 35 people were also injured in Saturday’s accident on the road near Xiaogan, Hubei Province, Xinhua said. “The blast cut the road up to 10 meters long and one meter deep. More than 700 square meters of road surface were blown up,” Zhang Liang, a highway administration official, was quoted as saying. The truck was carrying 5 tonnes of gunpowder from Liuyang in Hunan Province to a fireworks factory in Hebei Province, the report said. The truck’s three occupants, including the owner of the cargo, were detained by police.
■INDIA
Singh flies to Russia
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh flew to Russia yesterday on a visit to cement ties between the two allies and finalize a deal to expand cooperation on nuclear energy. Singh’s two-day trip, his sixth to Russia as prime minister since 2004, was also designed to firm up defense deals that have been hit by delays in delivery, the Press Trust of India news agency said. Singh will hold talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as part of an annual leadership meeting between the two countries that forged a strategic partnership deal in 2000, officials said. The prime minister, who visited Washington last month, said he hoped the Russia trip would focus on defense, civil nuclear energy and science issues.
■CHINA
Police reward for porn sites
Authorities have offered rewards of up to 10,000 yuan (US$1,465) to Internet users who report Web sites that feature pornography, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. However, the censors’ latest campaign against content that harms public morality appears to have encouraged Internet users to look for porn online. Within the first 24 hours, a hotline set up on Friday by Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center was flooded with more than 500 phone calls and 13,000 online tips, Xinhua said. The center is looking for Web sites and mobile phone-accessible sites that contain obscene material or advertise sex products, the report said. Rewards ranging from 1,000 yuan to 10,000 yuan will go to the first person to report each Web site, the center said.
■JAPAN
Swine flu deaths reach 100
The number of deaths in the country from the A(H1N1) swine flu virus has hit 100, Kyodo news agency reported yesterday. The latest fatality was reported in Kyoto, where a 74-year-old man had died after infection, the news agency quoted the local city office as saying. The man had an underlying illness, it said. The flu strain had caused at least 7,826 deaths worldwide as of Nov. 27. Flu transmission is active in East Asia and it remains “stably elevated in Japan,” but may be decreasing slightly in cities there, the WHO said.
■INDONESIA
Police nab roo smuggler
Police said on Saturday they had arrested a man believed to have smuggled 10 rare kangaroos by boat from New Guinea. East Java maritime police officer Widarmanto said that the police had caught the man on Friday off the coast of Surabaya with the red kangaroos. “When we caught him, five of the red kangaroos were already dead. The police then safeguarded the other five,” Widarmanto said.
■IRAQ
Election law in limbo
Parliament met on Saturday to vote on a new electoral law for polls early next year, but no quorum was reached and the session was postponed until yesterday, speaker Iyad Samarrai said. “There are only 113 members present and therefore no quorum. A new session will take place tomorrow [Sunday] at 11am,” he told members of parliament. There are 275 seats in the legislature and at least 138 members must be present for a session to go ahead. President Jalal Talabani had called Saturday’s session to vote on a draft law to govern legislative elections, urging parliamentarians to quickly pass the law, without which the general election can not proceed.
■UNITED STATES
Waco mammoth on display
A site where dozens of prehistoric mammoths died in a landslide and flooding some 68,000 years ago has opened to the public in Waco, Texas. The fossils were discovered in 1978 by two men hunting for snakes. They took one of the bones to a Baylor University museum official who identified it, triggering an archeological dig. Baylor and the city preserved the remains for two decades and, following a community fundraising effort, a permanent pavilion was built over the site, which opened to the public for the first time on Saturday. Visitors can observe the mammoth remains from walkways above the dirt where the fossils remain encased. Legislation is pending to make the site a national monument and part of the National Park Service.
■UNITED STATES
Parachutist electrocuted
Authorities say a man died after parachuting from a cellphone tower at night and hitting high-voltage power lines. Pinal County sheriff’s Lieutenant Tamatha Villar said that 23-year-old Darrell Dunafon and two friends broke into a cell tower site about 48km south of Phoenix, Arizona, on Friday night and were parachuting off the approximately 122m-tall antenna. Dunafon’s parachute tangled in nearby 12,000-volt power lines and he was shocked with a live wire. Villar said the two friends called for help and rescue crews turned off the power and cut Dunafon down.
■HONDURAS
Truck overturns, 11 killed
A flat-bed truck overloaded with 26 people plunged off a mountain road and down a ravine, killing 11 people, including two children, and injuring everybody else on board, highway police said on Saturday. The accident occurred late on Friday in Meambar, Comayagua department, 130km north of the capital Tegucigalpa, police said. The small truck was so overloaded with riders that its driver lost control and swerved over the side of the road into a deep ravine, they said.
■BRAZIL
Suspected bombers nabbed
Sao Paulo police arrested seven members of a neo-Nazi group suspected in a June 14 bombing during a gay pride parade that injured 22 people, police said on Friday. The four men and three women arrested are members of the “Hooligan Impact” group suspected of setting off a homemade bomb inside a bar in the city’s gay district after a gay pride parade, the police’s Racial Crimes and Hate Crime unit said. Two of the suspects were arrested 10 days ago and five others were picked up on Friday, unit chief Margarette Barreto said. They will be charged with organized crime and with injuring 12 people, police said, adding that only 12 of the 22 injured people came forth to press charges after the bombing.
‘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