ISRAEL
Holocaust remembered
The eerie wail of air raid sirens has brought the ordinarily bustling nation to a halt, marking two minutes of silence in memory of the 6 million Jews who perished during the Nazi Holocaust. Cars stopped in their tracks and millions of people stood in an annual tribute to the dead. Sounding a common theme in recent years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has drawn a parallel between the Nazis who sought to exterminate the Jewish people and Iran’s talk of the nation’s destruction. Restaurants and places of entertainment were closed. About 200,000 aged survivors of the Nazi genocide live in the country.
CHINA
Sea surveillance to increase
Beijing is stepping up its maritime surveillance by hiring more staff and increasing the number of inspection ships, state media said yesterday, amid deep-sea territorial disputes with neighboring nations. China Marine Surveillance, the nation’s ocean monitoring agency, will hire more than 1,000 people this year, raising staff numbers to “at least 10,000,” the official China Daily reported. It will also buy 36 inspection ships over the next five years, the newspaper said.
HONG KONG
Senior fights off muggers
An 81-year-old man single-handedly fought off a gang of teenage muggers, police said yesterday, with eight youths arrested and some requiring hospital treatment. The elderly man, only identified as Mak, was assaulted by the gang aged between 15 and 19 in a pedestrian tunnel during the 4am incident when he was on his way to do morning exercises. He was attacked from behind. “They pushed him to the ground and tried to rob him. The man fought back and the gang ran away empty-handed,” a police spokeswoman said. Some of the teenage suspects, five boys and three girls, sustained cuts and minor injuries after the man put up a fierce fight. Police later traced a trail of blood to a nearby apartment and detained the teenagers. The injured were taken to hospital for treatment. “They are still being detained and under investigation for assault with intent to rob,” the spokeswoman said.
VIETNAM
Publisher arrested
An underground publisher has been arrested after receiving an overseas award honoring his courage and contribution to freedom of expression, an industry federation said. Bui Chat, who received the International Publishers Association (IPA) Freedom to Publish Prize in Buenos Aires last week, was arrested on Saturday when he returned to the country, according to the Geneva-based IPA. “The award and prize certificate were confiscated,” the group said in a statement dated Sunday. “IPA condemns the arrest and calls for his immediate release.” The association said Chat was being held for investigation, but it did not say what specific allegations he faced.
RUSSIA
Nationalists protest Caucasus
About 500 nationalists rallied in central Moscow on Sunday to protest against their government’s financial support of the mainly Muslim, impoverished regions that make up the North Caucasus. Donning surgical face masks, bands of young people marched peacefully down Moscow’s mutli-laned streets with large red and black banners reading “Russia for Russians!” and “Migrant workers get out!” “We are united against the lawlessness committed by members of the ethnic diasporas,” said Alla Gorbunova, the spokeswoman of the Russian Social Movement, a nationalist group.
MEXICO
Charred remains found
Police found nine plastic bags and a barrel filled with charred human remains in the northern state of Durango, officials said on Sunday in the latest grim find tied to a brutal drug war. A military patrol on Saturday discovered the human remains, which included some bones, in the town of Santiago Papasquiaro. Gerardo Ortiz of the Durango prosecutor’s office said it had not yet been determined how many bodies had been charred. In the state’s capital, also named Durango, a total of 104 bodies buried in mass graves have been found since April 11. Most have not yet been identified.
GERMANY
Several detained after clash
Police arrested several people after left-wing extremists and the police clashed in Berlin late on Sunday following peaceful May Day marches by tens of thousands. Rioters claiming to protest against rising rents threw bottles and stones at two banks and shops and set fire to waste containers. Police used water cannons to break up the mob, but did not give a figure of those detained. About 4,000 anti-fascists demonstrated against a far-right rally in the northern city of Bremen. Two officers were lightly injured.
ISRAEL
Peace concert in Gaza
Renowned Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim will lead a “peace concert” by an orchestra of European musicians this afternoon in the Gaza Strip, tbe UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East peace process said in a statement yesterday. The rare concert will take place at Al-Mathaf Cultural House in Gaza City. Barenboim, an outspoken proponent of peace between Israel and the Palestinians, said he was delighted to be going to Gaza for the concert. “We are very happy to come to Gaza,” he said in the UN statement. “We are playing this concert as a sign of our solidarity and friendship with the civil society of Gaza.”
CUBA
Raul Castro joins march
Hundreds of thousands marched in May Day protests on Sunday to honor workers, even as the cash-starved government pressed ahead with reforms to slash jobless benefits and cut the number of public workers. Among those taking part in a rally held at Revolution Square in the city of Santiago de Cuba was President Raul Castro, wearing a traditional white guayabera shirt and waving a Cuban flag. It was Castro’s first appearance at May Day festivities in the city since taking power from his brother Fidel about five years ago. Massive rallies were also held in Havana.
EGYPT
Border opening mulled
The government intends to open its border with Gaza permanently to ease life for Palestinians under an Israeli blockade, but the mechanics of such a step are still being worked out, the foreign ministry said on Sunday. The initiative, received coolly in Israel, suggested a further Egyptian policy shift since the toppling of president Hosni Mubarak, whose government cooperated with the Jewish state in enforcing the blockade on the Islamist Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Under Mubarak, Egypt only sporadically opened up the Rafah border crossing for food and medicine, or to let through people, mainly those seeking medical treatment or traveling to study from the area, which is home to about 1.5 million Palestinians. Foreign ministry spokeswoman Menha Bakhoum said the issue was being studied “at all levels,” but did not say when this might be implemented.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in 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
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