CHINA
Eight die in collapse
Xinhua news agency said that a four-story residential building under construction in Xian, the capital of Shaanxi Province, collapsed on Saturday, killing eight workers and injuring three others. More than 300 firefighters, police and medical workers were sent to the site. Xinhua reported that a community official said the building could have toppled because of substandard construction material. Xinhua said yesterday that police were searching for two contractors who fled the scene. Poorly constructed buildings are a chronic problem in China and often blamed on poor planning, shoddy work or the theft of materials.
MALAYSIA
PAS promotes non-smoking
The Pan-Malaysia Islamic Party (PAS) will field a non-smoker as its candidate in an upcoming by-election, in northern Kelantan state, reports said yesterday, as the party seeks to boost its Islamic image. “I will reject smokers from the start. They are not only ruining their health but also wasting money,” party spiritual leader Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat was quoted as saying by the New Sunday Times. He also told the Malay newspaper Berita Minggu that the candidate must pray regularly and be a non--gambler. There are no religious edicts banning smoking, but Nik Abdul Aziz has said previously that some Muslim scholars consider smoking to be forbidden. In 2007, PAS said it was planning to field in national polls only non-smoking candidates or those who were willing to kick the habit.
JAPAN
Quake hits north of Tokyo
A magnitude 5.0 earthquake hit areas some 200km north of Tokyo yesterday as the nation’s early warning system alerted residents to the tremor. The quake caused no tsunami and there were no reports of damage or injuries, according to the Meteorological Agency and police. The temblor was centered near Joetsu City in Niigata Prefecture, occurring at 9:26am at a depth of 24km, the US Geological Survey said. About 20 percent of the world’s most powerful earthquakes strike Japan, which has developed one of the world’s most sophisticated tsunami warning systems. The Meteorological Agency issued a warning for a strong quake seconds after it detected the first underground tremors and the alert was flashed across television screens.
BELGIUM
NATO, Pakistan hold talks
NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen will meet with Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi today, the alliance said, amid a row over a NATO helicopter strike inside Pakistan. Qureshi will visit the transatlantic alliance’s headquarters in Brussels on the sidelines of a two-day Asia-Europe Meeting. Pakistan blocked a land route for NATO convoys carrying supplies to Afghanistan on Thursday after officials blamed a cross-border NATO helicopter attack for the deaths of three Pakistani soldiers. The Khyber pass at Torkham is on one of the main NATO supply routes through Pakistan into Afghanistan, where more than 152,000 US and NATO forces are fighting a Taliban-led insurgency. NATO said its aircraft had entered Pakistani airspace on Thursday in self-defense and killed “several armed individuals” after the air crews believed they had been fired upon from Pakistani territory. It was the fourth such strike last week by NATO helicopters pursuing militants into Pakistan, in actions that have been condemned by Islamabad.
UNITED STATES
Alligator seized from store
A pet alligator has been seized from a liquor store on New York’s Long Island. The Suffolk County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals says the 1m-long, illegally kept alligator was removed on Wednesday from Alpine Wines and Liquors in Wading River. Authorities say two employees of the store were issued tickets for possession of an illegal animal. The alligator will be sent to a sanctuary out of state. The store’s proprietor told the Newsday newspaper that an employee had asked her to take care of it while he was apartment hunting and that she thought the animal was a monitor lizard.
ITALY
Motorist falls to death
A motorist plunged to his death early yesterday after stopping at the side of the road to urinate without realizing in the darkness that he was on a viaduct 9m above the ground, a report said. His companion told emergency services that 36-year-old Ermes Calautto had jumped over a security rail after stopping the car on the A28 near Cavolano di Sacile in the northeast at around 3am, the ANSA news agency reported. When he had not returned after a few minutes, she got out of the car to see what happened and heard him groaning in the darkness, the report said. The woman alerted authorities but he was dead when they arrived.
RUSSIA
Arctic presence strengthened
The country is strengthening its naval presence in the Arctic, a senior military official said on Saturday, stoking concerns of a scramble to secure rights to the region’s energy-rich seabed. “The reinforcement in the Arctic of all Northern and Pacific Fleet units is continuing,” Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti news agency. The admiral said a proposal had been made to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that battleships be deployed in Arctic ports to protect polar sea routes. The melting of the polar icecap could open up new sea routes between Asia and Europe across Russia’s vast northern fringe. Furthermore, geological surveys indicate that the Arctic contains huge reserves of oil and natural gas. Vysotsky’s comments are likely to irk other Arctic nations such as Canada and the US, who dispute Russia’s territorial claims in the region. Last month Putin called for a “zone of peace” in the Arctic, and dismissed predictions of a “battle for the Arctic.”
VENEZUELA
Castro visit probable
Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro may visit Venezuela, his ally President Hugo Chavez said on Saturday, in what would be Castro’s first visit abroad in at least four years. “Dare I say that it is probable that Fidel Castro will visit Venezuela again, it’s probable,” Chavez told a television audience. “I have invited him to visit us ... Long live Fidel! We await you, comrade, so you can give a speech here of five or six hours.” Castro, 84, has not left his country since his 2006 illness, according to the Cuban government.
HAITI
Storm kills five
The country’s civil protection chief says five are dead and another person missing after a storm struck the southern peninsula. Civil protection head Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste says the deaths were caused on Friday in the western areas of the mountainous southern peninsula by rushing rivers and mudslides. More than a dozen houses were struck by a landslide. More than 300 people were evacuated from flooding rivers.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At 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
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