■JAPAN
Rescue helicopter crashes
A Japanese rescue helicopter with seven people aboard crashed yesterday on a mountain in Saitama Prefecture, northwest of Tokyo, police said. “Police could not immediately confirm the state of the seven,” a local police spokesman said. The helicopter — reportedly carrying two pilots, three aviation security officers and two rescuers — was on an operation to rescue a climber, local reports said.
■PAKISTAN
Minister’s son shot dead
Suspected Taliban in northwest Pakistan on Saturday shot dead the only son of a provincial minister well known for speaking out against the militants, police said. Mian Rashid Hussain, 28, was on his way home with a friend in Nowshera district, 25km east of Peshawar, when they were attacked. “He died on the spot when unknown gunmen sprayed them with bullets,” senior police officer Liaqat Ali said by telephone. The friend was critically injured, he said, before the attackers managed to flee by car. Bashir Ahmad Bilour, senior minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, blamed Taliban militants. “We will never bow down to them,” he said. The dead man was the only son of provincial information minister Mian Iftekhar Hussain. Mian Iftekhar Hussain is considered the most vocal minister against Taliban militants. He also worked as a spokesman for the provincial government. Bilour described the attack as a targeted killing. “Mian Iftekhar Hussain always raised a voice against terrorists and this was the only reason that his son was attacked,” he said.
■CHINA
Captive pandas released
Four pregnant pandas bred in captivity have been released into an area of forest in southwest China to prepare their cubs for life in the wild, state media reported. The pandas, aged four to five, have been taken to a tract of forest at a training base in Sichuan Province that was built to help the endangered animals adapt to the wild, Xinhua news agency said. They are expected to give birth to their cubs in the woodland, which covers two hectares, and live there until the young animals turn three or four, the report said late on Saturday. There are only about 1,590 pandas left in the wild in China, and authorities would like to increase that figure to save the endangered species. But so far, the only attempt at releasing a captive-bred panda into nature ended tragically. Xiang Xiang, a male cub who was trained to adapt to the wild and released in 2006, was found dead 10 months later, apparently killed by wild pandas native to the area. This new attempt aims to see the four pandas give birth and raise their cubs on their own, while workers keep watch through surveillance cameras.
■VIETNAM
Storm kills eight people
Vietnam’s government says floods and landslides triggered by remnants of Typhoon Chanthu killed eight people and left two others missing in the north. The national floods and storms control department said on its Web site yesterday seven people, including a three-year-old girl, died in Ha Giang Province, and a two-year-old girl was swept away by floods in neighboring Lao Cai Province. Two people were reported missing in Cao Bang Province when a mine they were working in collapsed. Typhoon Chanthu killed three people in southern China before weakening into a tropical storm on Friday after making landfall in Guangdong Province.
■ DR CONGO
Indian co-pilot taken hostage
Rebels took an Indian pilot hostage on Saturday when they attacked an aircraft on a remote airstrip in a tin mining zone in North Kivu Province, army and mining officials said. Army General Baigwa Dieudonne Amuli said Rwandan Hutu FDLR rebels were to blame for the attack in Walikale. Goma Express, whose aircraft was attacked, said a Russian colleague escaped and flew the plane back to Goma, the provincial capital 150km away, with a wounded Congolese national on board. The airstrip is often used to export cassiterite, a tin ore partly blamed for funding armed groups in the country’s simmering eastern conflict.
■ UNITED NATIONS
IAEA head denies hard line
UN atomic watchdog chief Yukiya Amano defended himself against suggestions that he had taken a tougher line against Iran than his predecessor, in a radio interview on Saturday. “I am against the politicization of the agency,” Amano told Radio France Internationale. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) “is an institution dealing with technical activities that involve political aspects ... It is not about being more or less conciliatory” toward Iran, Amano said. He served as Japan’s ambassador to the IAEA before being selected as its director general in July last year, following a 12-year stint under Mohamed ElBaradei, who was constantly criticized in some quarters, for allegedly being too soft on Iran and of overstepping his mandate as head of a purely technical agency.
■ SWITZERLAND
One dead in train derailment
Authorities confirmed Saturday that a 64-year-old Japanese woman was killed when a popular tourist train derailed in the Alps and said two other Japanese citizens were in a critical condition. Forty-two people were injured when three first-class wagons of the Glacier Express traveling between the ski resorts of Zermatt and St Moritz derailed on Friday. In its latest update issued on Saturday evening, Valais canton hospital said 17 people were still hospitalized, including two Japanese who remain in a critical condition. Besides one Spanish national, all those still in hospitals across western Switzerland are Japanese. Valais police said they were still investigating the cause of the accident.
■ EGYPT
Border crosser shot
An official says border guards fatally shot an African man and detained four others as they tried to cross the border into Israel. Hundreds of Africans seeking asylum and jobs try to reach Israel illegally every year in long desert trips, helped by Bedouin traffickers. Border officials have killed dozens migrants in the past two years, drawing criticism from rights groups. The government says the guards fire warning shots first. A security official said on Saturday that the 23-year-old man from Sudan’s Darfur region died from a shot to the arm. Four other Sudanese were detained on Friday.
■RUSSIA
Police kill suspected rebels
Police shot dead two suspected rebels on Saturday on a highway in the troubled Caucasus region of Ingushetia which borders Chechnya, RIA Novosti news agency reported. The rebels opened fire when police tried to stop their car for a security check in the Nazran region, a spokesman for the local security forces told Novosti. They were killed in return fire, he said, adding that the men were suspected of having staged earlier attacks on the police and killing civilians.
■UNITED STATES
Suspended police dog back
A police dog in the central Idaho resort town of Sun Valley is back on duty after serving a “suspension” for an unprovoked attack on a small schnauzer. Sun Valley Police Chief Cameron Daggett said the five-year-old German shepherd named Dax took a few weeks off the job after the incident. The dog will receive more training to prevent a reoccurrence of what Daggett said was an unfortunate situation. Dax is a four-year veteran of the force. He is trained to find illegal drugs, missing people and evidence at crime scenes. On June 26, authorities said Dax attacked a schnauzer named Max. Max’s owner said the city was paying the US$600 veterinarian bill.
■UNITED STATES
Obama urges liberal action
President Barack Obama is urging liberal activists and bloggers to “keep up the fight” to bring change to Washington. In a video played on Saturday at the annual Netroots Nation convention, the president acknowledged that some in the party’s left wing have been unhappy with the pace of change. Liberals have been disenchanted on issues from the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the failure to create a government-run insurance option in the healthcare overhaul. The president says in the brief video that the combat mission in Iraq will end in August. It’s a tough election year for Democrats, but Obama warned about returning to Republican policies “that got us into the mess.”
■UNITED STATES
Lutherans welcome gays
Seven pastors who work in the San Francisco Bay area and were barred from serving in the country’s largest Lutheran group because of a policy that required gay clergy to be celibate are being welcomed into the denomination. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will add six of the pastors to its clergy roster at a service at St Mark’s Lutheran Church in San Francisco on Sunday. Another pastor who was expelled from the church, but was later reinstated, will participate in the service. The group is among the first gay, bisexual or transgender Lutheran pastors to be reinstated or added to the rolls of the ELCA since the organization voted last year to lift the policy requiring celibacy. Churches can now hire noncelibate gay clergy who are in committed relationships. Megan Rohrer, one of the pastors who was to participate in yesterday’s rite of reception service, grew up in South Dakota and attended a Lutheran college where she said students tried to exorcise her “gay demons” by throwing holy water on her. Some of those people are now Lutheran pastors in South Dakota, she said.
■PERU
Miners call off strike
Workers at Buenaventura’s Uchucchacua silver mine suspended strike plans to continue labor talks aimed at improving working conditions, a union leader told reporters on Saturday. Only a day earlier, workers at Buenaventura’s Orcopampa gold mine delayed plans for a walkout after making progress in labor negotiations. Labor unrest has plagued Buenaventura, the country’s top precious metals miner, whose workers demand a bigger slice of the mining bonanza as the precious metal powerhouse recovers from the global financial crisis. A week-long strike by Buenaventura workers in February stopped production at Orcopampa, Uchucchacua and the company’s other gold unit Antapite.
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
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