■SRI LANKA
Explosion kills 25
Improperly stored detonators are likely to have triggered a dynamite explosion that killed 25 people and injured dozens, police said. Three containers of explosives used for road construction exploded on Friday inside a police compound, destroying the police station and a nearby agriculture office crowded with farmers. A police officer involved in the investigation said on Saturday the detonators were stored together with dynamite in one of the containers and may have been accidentally activated by a worker who was removing them for the day’s work.
■MALAYSIA
Indonesian maid burned
Police said yesterday they have arrested a couple for burning their Indonesian maid with a hot iron and scalding water with the husband also accused of raping the woman repeatedly. The latest case was among a string of shocking mistreatment of domestic workers that has strained ties between the country and Indonesia, prompting Jakarta to temporarily ban maids from working there since June last year. The couple, who reportedly have four children aged five to 15, face up to seven years in jail for causing grievous harm to the Indonesian woman. The husband could also face a maximum 20 years imprisonment if convicted of raping her.
■THE PHILIPPINES
Tourism target shifted
The country has announced it will stop marketing its tourist attractions to Hong Kong as the key market is lost after a hostage-taking fiasco left eight people from the territory dead. Tourism Secretary Alberto Lim said the government would instead focus its marketing efforts on other countries to hit the target of 3.3 million arrivals this year from just over 3 million last year. “Going to Hong Kong at this time would be wrong. They would say we are only after their business. We should show sympathy instead,” the minister added. The territory issued a an alert warning against all visits to the country after a sacked police officer hijacked a tourist bus in Manila, killing eight Hong Kong visitors as police mounted a bungled rescue. The Aug. 23 bloodbath outraged China and Hong Kong and prompted many prospective visitors to cancel. Some tourists already in the country left abruptly before their tours were completed. Lim said the country lost about 40 million pesos (US$890,000) in tourist income in the first two weeks after the hijacking. Samie Lim, vice president for tourism for the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said he found in recent visits to Hong Kong and China that it remained front-page news.
■THE PHILIPPINES
Abu Sayyaf kidnapper killed
Security forces yesterday killed a Muslim extremist involved in the kidnap of three Americans nine years ago, which led to the death of two of them, a military official said. Abdulkarim Sali, a member of the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf extremist group, was killed by soldiers and police in the southern island of Baslian before dawn, said regional military chief Lieutenant General Benjamin Dolorfino. An Abu Sayyaf band raided the island resort of Dos Palmas in a 2001, seizing Christian missionary couple, Gracia and Martin Burnham, fellow American Guillermo Sobero and a number of Filipinos. Sobero was beheaded as a warning to pursuing troops while Martin Burnham was later killed in a raid which freed his wife. Sali had been a wanted man for the kidnappings and had a bounty on his head, said the general.
■FRANCE
Limbless man swims Channel
A Frenchman who lost all his limbs in an electrical accident swam across the Channel on Saturday. Philippe Croizon, 42, set off from Folkestone just before 8am and arrived on the French coast near Wissant just before 9:30pm, propelled by his specially designed flipper-shaped prosthetic legs. “I did it, it’s crazy!” Croizon said on France Info radio, saying he hoped to become “a symbol of overcoming one’s limits.” Steadying himself with the stumps of his arms, Croizon had kept up a constant speed in good weather and had been accompanied by dolphins for part of the crossing, his support team said. In 1994, the metalworker was hit by a 20,000-volt charge as he attempted to remove a television aerial from a house roof when an arc of current surged through him from a nearby powerline. Croizon trained for his feat for two years and last month completed a 12-hour swim between the ports of Noirmoutier and Pornic on France’s Atlantic coast.
■GERMANY
Get used to migrants: Merkel
Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germans had for too long failed to grasp how immigration was changing their country and would have to get used to the sight of more mosques in their cities, according to newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The country, home to at least 4 million Muslims, has been divided in recent weeks by a debate over integration sparked by disparaging remarks about Muslim immigrants by an outspoken member of the central bank. “Our country is going to carry on changing and integration is also a task for the society taking up the immigrants,” Merkel said. “For years we’ve been deceiving ourselves about this. Mosques, for example, are going to be a more prominent part of our cities than they were before.” The uproar was sparked by the Bundesbank’s Thilo Sarrazin, who argued Turkish and Arab immigrants were failing to integrate and swamping the nation with a higher birth rate.
■OMAN
Shourd returns home
Sarah Shourd, one of three Americans held in Iran for more than a year on suspicion of spying, left Muscat on Saturday on her way home to the US. “I thank Sultan Qaboos and the Omani authorities for hosting me in Oman,” she said at a news conference shortly before her departure, a witness said. “I would like to thank the American ambassador for hosting my family,” she said, asking people to pray for the release of her two male companions, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal. US officials and the detainees’ families have rejected Iran’s charges of espionage.
■SOMALIA
Confidence vote postponed
A vote of confidence in Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke, seen as a power-struggle between the leader of the government and President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, has been postponed, officials said on Saturday. Sharmarke has come under pressure to step down in recent months, with Ahmed leading calls for him to go. Legislators voted on Thursday to hold a confidence vote on Saturday but there were not enough present for a quorum and the parliament speaker said the session would not take place. Parliament has already voted once to oust Sharmarke and his Western-backed government, but the prime minister rejected the previous vote in May as unconstitutional and refused to resign.
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