SWEDEN
Bus crash injures at least 17
A bus carrying 44 Chinese tourists, their travel guide and a driver, crashed and flipped on its side on Friday, injuring at least 17 people, police said. “According to the latest information I have, 17 people have been taken by ambulance to different hospitals in the region,” said Thomas Gustafsson, the duty officer in the county of Vaestmanland to the west of Stockholm. “As far as I know now, no one was seriously injured,” he said.
MYANMAR
Bomb injures two
A bomb exploded late on Friday at a busy market popular with civil servants in Naypyidaw, injuring two people, a government official said. “There was a bomb blast in a toilet at Myoma market at about 9:30pm. Two people were slightly injured while running away. The authorities are investigating,” the official said, asking not to be named. The military-dominated nation has been hit by several bomb blasts in recent years, which the authorities have blamed on armed exile groups or ethnic minority rebels.
THAILAND
E. coli found in cabbage
The government said yesterday that it had detected E. coli in cabbage imported from Europe and was checking whether it was the lethal strain involved in a killer outbreak in northern Germany. The country, which had a false alarm about a shipment of European avocados earlier in the week, has urged the public not to panic, saying that there are several types of E. coli. “We need three to five days to check on the bacteria’s strain,” said Sathaporn Wongcharoen, director general of the Medical Science Department of the Public Health Ministry.
THAILAND
Hundreds of tortoises found
Authorities have found nearly 400 protected tortoises in unclaimed bags at an airport in Bangkok, an official confirmed yesterday. The Indian and Burmese Star tortoises had been in luggage for about 10 days by the time they were found late on Friday at Suvarnabhumi Airport, said a senior customs official, who declined to be named. Loading tags suggested they had originally come from Dhaka in Bangladesh, according to the Freeland Foundation, a counter-trafficking organization, before going to Japan via Bangkok and returning to Bangkok when they were not collected. The foundation estimated the tortoises could fetch up to US$31,000 on the black market. Out of 370 found, four had died during the journey, it said. It is the second large seizure of the creatures in a little over a week and officials believe the same gang was behind both incidents. “These consecutive seizures highlight the continuing high volume illicit wildlife trade link between South and Southeast Asia ... If we can’t stop [smugglers], we’ll lose these species forever,” Freeland senior program officer Onkuri Majumdar said.
INDONESIA
Police thwart cyanide plot
Police arrested eight terror suspects who were plotting a mass poisoning of police personnel, an anti-terror officer said yesterday, as one report said they had planned to use cyanide. The member of the police’s counter-terrorism squad, who did not want to be identified, said six suspects had been arrested late on Friday in Jakarta after two were held in Pekalongan city, Java, on Thursday. “They planned to attack police personnel by poisoning food at police office canteens,” the source said. Tempo news Web site quoted an unnamed senior police official saying the suspects had planned to use cyanide.
‘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
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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in