■ AUSTRALIA
McInnes faces more claims
Up to 16 women could take part in a A$37 million (US$33 million) sexual harassment case involving David Jones, the nation’s most exclusive department store, lawyers for the chief complainant said yesterday. Publicist Kristy Fraser-Kirk is suing the store and its former chief, Mark McInnes, over unwelcome advances that allegedly included placing his hand under her clothes and attempting to kiss her. The 27-year-old’s lawyers told the Federal Court that six more David Jones workers had come forward to support Fraser-Kirk’s claims and were expected to take part in the landmark suit, in addition to four already involved. Rachel Francois, Fraser-Kirk’s lawyer, said three other employees had also made complaints against other David Jones staff, while two former staff of McInnes from another company had also come forward, making a total of 16. McInnes was not in court, but he issued a statement shortly after the hearing rejecting the claims.
■ INDIA
Rebels kill six policemen
Maoist guerrillas killed six policemen in a gunfight in the eastern state of Bihar, police said yesterday, in the latest of a series of rebel attacks on security forces. More than 150 Maoists battled with the police, who were on patrol in forests about 150km from the state capital Patna late on Sunday, senior police officer P.K. Thakur said. Authorities in New Delhi launched an offensive last year to tackle the worsening insurgency, but since then the Maoists have hit back with repeated strikes against police and paramilitary forces. On Sunday five policemen were killed by Maoists in the state of Chhattisgarh.
■ AUSTRALIA
‘Spiderman’ arrested
A French climber known as “Spiderman” was arrested on the roof of a 57-story Sydney skyscraper yesterday after scaling the building without ropes or a harness to raise climate change awareness. Alain Robert, 48, scaled the 150m, twin-tower Lumiere apartment building in central Sydney in about 25 minutes, as dozens of curious onlookers packed the pavement to cheer, clap and take photographs. “I think people were impressed with him, he is the world’s best climber,” publicist Max Markson said. “His motivation for doing it is ... to raise awareness of global warming and the environment.” The Frenchman unfurled a banner advertising the www.onehundredmonths.org Web site, which claims mankind has only limited time before greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere reach irreversibly dangerous levels. Robert was arrested by police when he reached the skyscraper’s roof and taken to a nearby police station, where he was charged with trespass and endangering the safety of another. “He has been granted conditional bail to appear at the Downing Centre Local Court on Friday,” police said.
■CHINA
Tiger habitat to be set up
Beijing and Moscow have agreed to set up the first cross-border protection zone for Siberian tigers, as they try to boost efforts to save the endangered species, the China Daily newspaper reported yesterday. The zone will straddle China’s northeastern province of Jilin and Russia’s Primorsky Krai region, and authorities in both countries will launch an anti-poaching campaign along the border, the report said. They will also adopt identical monitoring systems for Siberian tigers and their prey, conduct joint ecological surveys and step up the amount of information they share, it said.
■ SUDAN
Russian pilots kidnapped
Two Russian pilots operating in the Darfur region have been abducted by unknown gunmen, an army spokesman said yesterday. The pair were seized in Nyala, capital of South Darfur State, on Sunday, spokesman Sawarmi Khaled Saad said. “Two Russian pilots were kidnapped by a small armed group in a section of Nyala,” Saad said. “We have closed off all access routes [around Nyala].” The kidnappings mark the second abduction of foreigners in Darfur this month. On Aug. 14, two Jordanian police advisers deployed with the joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force police were kidnapped by gunmen but released a few days later.
■ RUSSIA
Nursing home fire kills nine
A fire broke out early yesterday at a nursing home, killing nine people. Emergency officials said the blaze may have been started by a resident setting himself on fire. A spokeswoman for the regional Emergencies Ministry, Daria Korovina, said the fire at the facility in Tver injured two others and forced the evacuation of some 480 people. Tver is about 200km north of Moscow. Korovina said investigators found a canister of flammable liquid in the room where the fire started, leading to speculation the resident set himself ablaze. Russia suffers frequent fires at hospitals, schools and other state-run facilities. Many have been blamed on official negligence and violations of fire safety rules.
■ SOMALIA
Forces capture pirates
Japanese, EU and NATO forces cooperated on Sunday to intercept pirates who were preparing to attack ships in the Gulf of Aden, the NATO counter-piracy task force said. A Japanese Maritime Self Defence aircraft spotted a pirate skiff with seven suspected pirates on board and alerted a helicopter from the Danish warship Esbern Snare under NATO command, which intercepted the skiff. “Subsequently the suspected pirates threw their weapons overboard and surrendered,” a NATO statement, released in London, said. An Italian helicopter from another vessel under NATO command provided support for the operation. Crew members from an American warship, the USS Kauffman, also in NATO’s counter-piracy operation, boarded the skiff and found a ladder pirates used to board ships “and other pirate-related paraphernalia,” the statement added. “
■ NORWAY
Al-Qaeda bomb plot foiled
When police arrested a suspected al-Qaeda cell last month they turned up the makings of a bomb lab tucked away in a nondescript Oslo apartment building. Authorities learned early on about the alleged cell by intercepting e-mail from an al-Qaeda operative in Pakistan and — thanks to those early warnings — were able to secretly replace a key bomb-making ingredient with a harmless liquid when one of the suspects ordered it at an Oslo pharmacy. Officials say the suspected plot was one of three planned attacks on the West hatched in the rugged mountains of northwest Pakistan by some of al-Qaeda’s most senior leaders. The other plots targeted the bustling New York subway and a shopping mall in Manchester, England. The ringleader of the plot was 39-year-old Mikael Davud, a Uighur who came to the country in 1999 as part of a UN refugee program and was naturalized eight years later. Davud was arrested on July 8 along with suspected accomplices Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak Bujak, a 37-year-old Iraqi Kurd, and a 31-year-old Uzbek national, David Jakobsen.
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
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