■CHINA
CNPC containing pollution
China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) sought to contain ocean pollution and other impacts from an explosion of two crude oil pipelines in the northeastern port of Dalian, state media reported yesterday. Hundreds of firefighters battled for more than 15 hours to extinguish the blaze that started late on Friday when a pipe transporting crude oil from a ship to a storage tank blew up, causing a second pipeline nearby to explode. There were no casualties, but state television CCTV reported that oil had contaminated a 50km² area of the ocean off the port city in Liaoning Province.
■CHINA
Bus plunges into river
A bus plunged into a river in the southwest early yesterday, leaving 27 people on board missing and feared dead, state media reported. Rescuers were able to save 11 others. The official Xinhua news agency said the accident occurred in southwestern Sichuan Province when the long-distance passenger bus fell into the Dajin River in Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. Xinhua had initially reported that the bus had fallen off a cliff, killing 23 people. The bus had been traveling from Ma’erkang County to the provincial capital of Chengdu when it plummeted into the river. It was designed to carry a maximum of 35 people but had 38 people aboard, including three children, Xinhua said.
■AFGHANISTAN
Taliban stage prison break
Taliban militants staged a daring prison break early yesterday when they blew up the main gates of a jail in the west and freed 14 inmates, police said. The insurgents planted a bomb at a gate of the main prison in Farah city, capital of Farah Province, provincial police chief Mohammad Faqir Askar said. “Twenty prisoners escaped but we arrested six of them soon after the incident and 14 are still at large,” he said. Askar blamed the blast on Taliban militants who have been waging a bloody insurgency for almost nine years. He said four other inmates had been injured in the blast.
■BANGLADESH
Islamist books removed
The government has ordered tens of thousands of mosques and libraries to remove books written by the controversial founder of an Islamic party, an official said on Saturday. The state-run Islamic Foundation took the decision after Syed Abul Ala Maududi’s books were deemed “anti-Islamic” and likely to foster militancy in the Indian subcontinent, its head Shamim Mohammad Afjal said. Maududi is the founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, which has a large number of followers in South Asia — home to about 450 million Muslims. The Jamaat is the country’s largest Islamic party, with two elected lawmakers in the parliament.
■AUSTRALIA
Irish tourist drowns
A 27-year-old Irish tourist has drowned after getting into difficulties at a remote swimming spot in the north, police said yesterday. The man’s body was found late on Saturday at the Malabanjbanjdju billabong, or pool, in Kakadu National Park, made famous as the setting for the 1986 film Crocodile Dundee. Police said the man was with a group of about 20 tourists who raised the alarm after he failed to surface. They did not believe a crocodile was involved. “The National Park rangers located his body in about 2m of water,” a police spokesman told public broadcaster ABC. “There’s no indications a crocodile was involved, however we have to wait until the autopsy results.”
■UNITED KINGDOM
Ban on veils ‘unlikely’
A ban on Muslim women wearing face-covering veils is “very unlikely,” despite widespread public support for such a move, Immigration Minister Damian Green said. He told the Sunday Telegraph that a ban similar to that approved in France, and which a poll on Friday showed was backed by 67 percent of respondents, was a “rather un-British thing to do.” A fellow Conservative lawmaker had earlier said he refused to meet female constituents who wore the face veil and had proposed a law to ban the practice. However, Green said: “Telling people what they can and can’t wear, if they’re just walking down the street, is a rather un-British thing to do. We’re a tolerant and mutually respectful society.”
■Sweden
Bubbly found in shipwreck
Divers have discovered what is thought to be the world’s oldest drinkable champagne in a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea, one of the finders said on Saturday. They tasted the one bottle they’ve brought up so far before they even got back to shore. Diving instructor Christian Ekstrom said the bottles are believed to be from the 1780s and likely were part of a cargo destined for Russia. The nationality of the sunken ship has not yet been determined. “We brought up the bottle to be able to establish how old the wreck was,” he said. Ekstrom said the divers were overjoyed when they popped the cork on their boat after hauling the bubbly from a depth of 60m. “It tasted fantastic. It was a very sweet champagne, with a tobacco taste and oak,” Ekstrom said.
■Switzerland
Polanski attends concert
Film director Roman Polanski, freed earlier this week from house arrest, attended a Saturday night concert given by his wife at the Montreux jazz festival. The 76-year-old Polanski arrived with festival founder Claude Nobs for the performance by French actress and singer Emmanuelle Seigner on the closing night of the annual event on Lake Geneva, according to a Reuters witness. Polanski was mobbed by photographers as he arrived with heavy security, but did not speak or appear on the stage during his wife’s 55-minute set, which he watched from a VIP box.
■France
Drugs found in Hilton’s bag
Paris Hilton was briefly detained in Corsica after sniffer dogs detected a “quite small” quantity of marijuana in her bag, a French newspaper reported on Saturday. Corse Matin newspaper said officers at the airport in Figari found about 1g worth of marijuana. Hilton, who was transiting the French Mediterranean island in a private jet on Friday, was hauled in for questioning and released about 30 minutes later, the report said.
■Albania
Bus crash kills 14
Fourteen people died and 12 were injured, many of them seriously, on Saturday at about 5pm when a bus fell off a cliff 140km north of the capital, Tirana, Albanian authorities said. Police official Hysni Burgaj said a sudden downpour caused the accident. Authorities still did not know the total number of bus passengers late on Saturday. The bus fell 30 to 40m off a cliff in Dom Gjegjan village, in the district of Puka, police said. The injured were brought to hospitals in the Albanian capital, Tirana, and the northern city of Shkodra. The government has declared Sunday a day of national mourning, with flags flying at half-mast.
■UNITED STATES
Biden campaign penalized
Vice President Joe Biden’s 2008 presidential campaign has been ordered to pay a US$219,000 penalty for improperly accepting a discounted private plane flight and taking individual campaign contributions above the legal limit, to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) said. The FEC took the action against the Biden for President organization after an audit of the campaign’s activities, according to a statement dated Friday on the agency’s Web site. A Biden spokeswoman said the vice president will pay the penalty to the US Treasury to resolve the matter.
■PUERTO RICO
Dengue epidemic strikes
Mosquito-borne dengue fever is reaching epidemic stages across the Caribbean, with dozens of deaths reported and health authorities concerned it could get much worse as the rainy season advances. The increase in cases is being blamed on warm weather and an unusually early rainy season, which has produced an explosion of mosquitoes. Health officials say the flood of cases is straining the region’s hospitals. In the Dominican Republic, where at least 27 deaths have been reported, hundreds of health workers and soldiers went door-to-door on Saturday to warn about the virus and destroy mosquito breeding areas. Hospitals in Trinidad are running out of beds and Puerto Rico is facing what officials say could be its worst dengue outbreak in more than a decade. At least five people have died and another 6,300 suspected cases have been reported.
■CANADA
Four killed in plane crash
Four people died and two were injured in a float plane crash in bad weather in northern Quebec, authorities said on Saturday. The Canadian military sent out a patrol to locate the de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver aircraft after it was deemed overdue by its owner Air Saguenay, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada and provincial police said. “The plane crashed into the side of a mountain in thick fog,” said Chantale LaFlamme, spokeswoman for the Transportation Safety Board. “Paramedics parachuted onto the scene,” added Sergeant Benoit Richard of the provincial police. Two survivors of the crash were airlifted to hospital, where one was treated for “serious burns” and the other for “relatively minor injuries, given the circumstances,” he said.
■UNITED STATES
Man cited over rattlers
A man in Malta, Idaho, who authorities say had 25 Western rattlesnakes in a large bucket in his apartment, has been issued two misdemeanor citations by the state’s Department of Fish and Game. Officials said Terry Brian Teeter had as many as 32 snakes, but he gave some away and ate two others. The 38-year-old said he was unaware a license was needed to hunt rattlesnakes in Idaho. He said he also didn’t know that there was a state limit of four rattlers a year. Teeter said he was trying to find a buyer for the snakes and had contacted a Utah research center that milks snakes for venom.
■UNITED STATES
Gabor rushed to hospital
Zsa Zsa Gabor’s publicist said the 93-year-old actress was rushed to a hospital after falling out of bed and breaking several bones. John Blanchette said Gabor was watching television in her Bel Air home on Saturday evening when she reached to answer the phone and tumbled to the floor. He didn’t know what bones were broken.
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