■CHINA
Quake kills one in Sichuan
A moderate earthquake struck the southwestern part of the country on Saturday, killing one person, injuring at least 11 others and collapsing some homes, the government said. The quake measuring 5.0 on the Richter scale struck Sichuan Province at 5:36am, with its epicenter near the city of Suining, the Sichuan earthquake authority said. The US Geological Survey rated the quake at magnitude 5.2. State TV showed pictures of single-story homes that had collapsed into rubble. The reports indicated that dozens of homes were damaged or collapsed but did not give a precise figure.
■LIBYA
Russia to sell weapons
Tripoli struck a deal to buy Russian arms worth almost US$2 billion, Russian news agencies quoted Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as saying on Saturday. “Yesterday [Friday], a contract worth 1.3 billion euros [US$1.8 billion] was signed. It does not only involve firearms,” Putin was quoted as saying by Ria Novosti and Interfax. Putin was speaking following a meeting with the head of the Izhmash factory, which manufactures Kalashnikov rifles. Russian officials said last week that negotiations were underway with Libyan Defense Minister Younes Jaber in Moscow over the sale of Russian weapons. Putin did not specify the type of arms or military equipment involved in the deal.
■BULGARIA
Stray dogs kill zoo animals
The director of Sofia’s zoo said a pack of stray dogs killed 13 of its animals. Zoo director Ivan Ivanov said an unknown number of dogs leapt through a fence and attacked eight mouflon, four fallow deer and a doe. Ivanov said on Saturday the incident occurred last week and was the most serious in the zoo’s recent history. He said freezing temperatures and hunger had driven the dogs. Two fallow deer and one mouflon managed to escape and survived before security guards intervened. The dogs also escaped. Ivanov said that new animals of the same species have been already transported to Sofia. The zoo is the largest in the country, with 1,310 animals of 274 different species.
■IRAN
Two men hanged for rape
Criticized by rights groups for its use of capital punishment, Tehran hanged two men on Saturday for rape, a local news agency reported “The two accused were hanged today at Evin prison with blue ropes around their necks so as to serve as a lesson for all aggressors,” Fars news agency quoted the head of Tehran criminal affairs court Fakhreddin Jafarzadeh as saying. Fars said the rape was committed last year. Murder, adultery, rape, armed robbery, drug trafficking and apostasy — the renouncing of religion — are all punishable by death under Shariah.
■GERMANY
Three killed in snow chaos
Heavy snow and high winds have caused traffic chaos, leaving three people dead and dozens more injured. Police say one person was killed and more than 40 injured in more than 300 accidents on Friday night and Saturday in the northwestern state of North Rhine-Wesphalia alone. Two other people were killed in separate accidents on slick roads in the southern state of Bavaria. The winter weather caused long traffic jams on many highways, the closure of others, and flight delays and cancellations. In the northern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania all public transit was shut down in the city of Rostock as the area was hit with 30cm of new snow overnight and high winds.
■UNITED STATES
Film editor killed in chase
An award-winning film editor has been struck and killed by a getaway car speeding from a New York City drugstore robbery. Police identified the woman as 39-year-old Karen Schmeer. Her mother, Eleanor DuBois Schmeer, confirmed the film editor’s death. Schmeer was the editor of Academy Award-winning filmmaker Errol Morris’ documentaries, including Fog of War. Morris wrote on his Twitter feed that Schmeer’s death was a “senseless tragedy.” She was crossing a street on the Upper West Side on Friday night when she was struck by a car fleeing a CVS drugstore where police say three men had stolen over-the-counter medication. She was pronounced dead at St Luke’s Hospital. Lieutenant John Grimpel said the driver of the getaway car has been arrested on a murder charge.
■COLOMBIA
Dogs sniff cocaine cookies
Sniffer dogs smelled something that was just not right: cocaine-stuffed cookies that were about to be shipped to Barcelona, police said on Saturday. A total of 5kg of the drug were concealed in 10 packs of cookies, counternarcotics police said in a statement. Not your average bisciut, “the cream was taken out of the cookies and replaced with compressed bleached cocaine to avoid suspicion from counternarcotics units,” it said. The South American nation is the world’s biggest producer of cocaine, with about 430 tonnes last year — around half of global production — the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said. Spain is one of the top ports of entry for drugs to be smuggled in Europe, including hashish from North Africa and cocaine from Latin America.
■PERU
Twenty killed in flooding
Heavy flooding that trapped thousands of tourists visiting the Inca city of Machu Picchu has killed 20 and left at least five missing, the Civil Defense force said on Saturday. Thousands of others have been affected by heavy rains, the worst to hit the country in five years. In the Cusco region, the downpours prompted landslides that trapped 3,500 visitors in and around the picturesque mountaintop tourist site of Machu Picchu. Authorities used 12 helicopters and 40 pilots over four days to evacuate all the travelers trapped near the site, Latin America’s top tourist destination. The evacuation of all visitors ended late on Friday. “The good news is that Machu Picchu, along with all the ancient sites, is intact,” said Carlos Millas, president of the chamber of commerce in Cusco, a region heavily dependent on the income from visiting tourists. But the railway that ferries 90 percent of the 1,000 people that visit Machu Picchu each day to the site was damaged in the floods, and Peru Rail warned that repairs could take up to two months.
■UNITED STATES
Dog carver shoots himself
Stephen Huneck, an internationally known artist, woodcarver and furniture maker whose most famous work was the Dog Chapel, a hand-built church in Vermont to which dogs and their owners can go for quiet reflection and spiritual renewal, died on Jan. 7 in Littleton, New Hampshire. He was 61 and lived in St Johnsbury, Vermont. Huneck shot himself, his wife, Gwen, said. She said he had been despondent over having had to lay off most of the employees of his art business that week. A largely self-taught carver, Huneck achieved a level of success that comes to few outsider artists. His work was sought after by collectors, exhibited widely and featured often in the news media.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in 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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was