PHILIPPINES
Rains kill one, five missing
Heavy rains have drenched part of the country, killing one person, leaving five fishermen missing and sending nearly 10,000 people to emergency shelters. Disaster officials said most of the evacuations have been taking place along the Agusan River in Mindanao. Rising knee-deep floodwaters have damaged 60 houses, cut off roads and water and power supply. Flights to the regional capital in Butuan have been suspended. The national disaster agency said yesterday one man drowned and five fishermen were missing earlier this week in the north.
CHINA
Thousands flee quake
Local authorities have evacuated 64,500 people from their homes in Yunnan Province, following a quake that damaged hundreds of houses, state media reported yesterday. The magnitude 4.8 quake rattled an area near the border with Myanmar shortly after 3pm on Tuesday, the US Geological Survey said. A total of 678 homes were damaged, but only one collapsed, Xinhua news agency said. No casualties have been reported in the quake. County officials said emergency supplies of tents, quilts, coats and rice had been sent to the area.
FRANCE
Links to Parkinson’s found
An international consortium of scientists has found five variants of genes that are linked to Parkinson’s disease, bringing the tally to 11, a paper published by The Lancet yesterday said. Until the first genetic clue was found in 1997, the medical consensus was that Parkinson’s had environmental — ie, non-inherited — causes. The five variants were netted in an overview of genomic studies carried out by scientists in Britain, Germany, France, Iceland, the Netherlands and the US. None of the tiny DNA changes is responsible by itself for causing for this complex disease of the nervous system, but in conjunction with other variants, boosts the risk of it. The 20 percent of patients who had the highest number of variants were two-and-a-half times likelier to develop Parkinson’s compared with the 20 percent with the least variants, the researchers said. found.
RUSSIA
Rebel’s brother detained
The brother of the nation’s most prominent Islamist rebel, Doku Umarov, was detained in Italy on his way to seek political asylum, newspapers reported on Tuesday, citing Italian immigration officers. Chechen native Ruslan Umarov was traveling from France to Italy when he was detained in a train station outside Venice for entering the country illegally. Media reports said he was detained on Jan. 6. He was based in Europe after he won a 2008 case in the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights against Russia. Ruslan’s brother, Doku, leads the Caucasus Emirate, an Islamist insurgent group seeking to establish an independent Islamic state for the predominantly Muslim North Caucasus region.
BRAZIL
‘Largest orchid’ on show
The “largest orchid in the world” was growing in a botanic garden in Brasilia, at a height of 2.5m, with some stems measuring as long as 3m, the environmental agency said on Tuesday. Displayed at the Brazilian Orchids Project garden, the flower — part of the Grammatophyllum genus — has been growing for five years and already has 19 long stems, on which 400 flowers bloom, the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources said. Experts are working on a special hybrid species of orchid by crossing Grammatophyllum flowers with the Cyrtopodium genus.
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