CHINA
Xinjiang death toll up
The government yesterday raised the death toll to 18 from a clash at a police station in the restive far western region of Xinjiang, saying that 14 “rioters” died along with two policemen and two hostages in the worst violence there in a year. Officials previously said at least four people were killed in what they described as a terrorist attack, but which the Germany-based exile group World Uyghur Congress said was an attack on peaceful protesters. The congress had said 20 Uighurs were killed and 70 arrested, when police opened fire on protesters, leading to fighting between the two sides. The Xinjiang government’s Web site said that police fatally shot the 14 rioters after giving “legal education and warnings,” adding that 18 rioters had bought and made weapons and sneaked into the desert city of Hotan days before the clash on Monday.
AFGHANISTAN
Pakistan link suspected
The suspected killers of President Hamid Karzai’s close ally Jan Mohammad Khan had received telephone calls from Pakistan before and after the deadly shooting, the interior minister told parliament on Tuesday. Khan, the former governor of Uruzgan Province, was killed in a gun attack on his Kabul home. Interior Minister Besmullah Mohammadi told parliament that the government was investigating two calls made to the gunmen from Pakistan, according to MP Mohammad Akbari. The assassination, claimed by the Taliban, came less than a week after the president’s half-brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was shot dead by a friend at his home in Kandahar in another attack claimed by the insurgents.
NEPAL
Everest to be re-measured
The government has ordered a new measurement of Mount Everest to determine exactly how high the world’s highest mountain is, an official said yesterday. Nepal has continued to recognize the decades-old measurement of 8,448m, but there have been other claims by China (8,844m) and western climbers (a US expedition in 1999 put it at 8,850m). Land Reforms Ministry spokesman Gopal Giri said that the plans would be put in place this week and the work would entail placing a device on the peak that would measure the height using satellite technology. The task would take two years, he said.
SOUTH KOREA
Tablet PCs taking over
The government is taking a US$2 billion gamble that its students are ready to ditch paper textbooks in favor of tablet computers as part of a vast digital scholastic network. France, Singapore, Japan and others are also racing to create classrooms where touch-screens provide instant access to millions of pieces of information. However, Seoul believes it enjoys an advantage over these countries, with kids who are considered the world’s savviest navigators of the digital universe.
SOUTH KOREA
Home-built plane unveiled
The government unveiled the nation’s first home-built private aircraft as part of its efforts to develop commercial planes. The four-seater, single-engine propeller plane made South Korea the world’s 28th nation to build and fly an indigenous non-military aircraft, the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs said. The new plane, named the Naraon, is made of a light, carbon-based composite material. With a top speed of 389kph and maximum flight distance of 1,850km, it can reach most major cities in Japan and China without refueling.
UNITED KINGDOM
Mesolithic hearth found
An early prehistoric hearth has been discovered on the planned construction site for a branch of major supermarket chain Sainsbury’s. The charcoal remains, excavated from the site in Nairn, a town in the Scottish Highlands, date back to the Mesolithic period (10,000 to 4,000 BC). They are believed to have been a temporary traveling stop rather than a settlement because of the absence of any further Mesolithic findings at the site. “An extremely large quantity of wood charcoal fragments was recovered from the hearth. The size of the fragments suggests either deliberate deposition or in-situ burning,” Headland Archaeology, which carried out the excavation, said in a report. Archeologists used carbon-dating of the charcoal to determine the age of the hearth. During the Mesolithic period, or Middle Stone Age, the British isles were populated by nomadic hunter-gatherers. It is believed they lived in family groups and traveled across land, and possibly waterways, to hunt and fish.
KYRGYZSTAN
Quake rocks border area
A powerful earthquake struck a mountainous region on the southern border with Uzbekistan early yesterday. No casualties or serious damage were immediately reported. The US Geological Survey said the magnitude 6.2 temblor hit at about 1:35am local time in an area 35km away from the Uzbek city of Ferghana, which has a population of more than 200,000. In Andijan, the second-largest city in Uzbekistan’s Ferghana Valley, roughly 100km from the epicenter, residents told reporters that many people had left their homes in panic and were spending the night in the streets. Media reports from across the area carried similar testimonies about shaking buildings and cracks appearing in the walls of people’s homes.
GREECE
Migrant boat detained
Authorities have arrested about 100 migrants without papers on a sail boat off the port of Astakos in the Ionian Sea, harbor police said yesterday. “All the migrants are in good health,” a police spokesman said, adding that the boat, the Notos, was probably on its way to Italy. Authorities said they believed the people smugglers responsible were likely among the 100 on board the vessel. The catamaran was led into Astakos, where authorities were in the process of counting the migrants and determining where they had come from. The nation, on the southeast edges of Europe, has for years been prone to waves of immigrants from Asia and Africa seeking to get into western Europe.
SOMALIA
UN declares famine crisis
The UN said yesterday that famine had hit two rebel-held areas because of a severe drought affecting more than 10 million people in the Horn of Africa. “The United Nations declared today that famine exists in two regions of southern Somalia: southern Bakool, and Lower Shabelle,” a statement by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for Somalia said. Both are areas controlled by al-Shebab insurgents. “Across the country nearly half of the Somali population — 3.7 million people — are now in crisis, of whom an estimated 2.8 million people are in the south,” the statement read. “Consecutive droughts have affected the country in the last few years, while the ongoing conflict has made it extremely difficult for agencies to operate and access communities in the south of the country,” it added. Officials warned that unless urgent action was taken the areas afflicted by famine would grow.
UNITED KINGDOM
Eradication date at risk
An independent group of health experts says the world is not on track to wipe out polio. The group said in a new report yesterday that it was “unshakable” in its view that the global effort to stop polio by the end of next year is at risk. Since 1998, the WHO and partners have been trying to get rid of the disease, but progress has stalled in recent years and some have questioned whether polio can actually be eradicated. Sir Liam Donaldson, the chairman of the group, said unless “some hard messages are given with no holds barred, progress will not be made.”
PANAMA
Spanish decision criticized
Relatives of the 224 people killed by tainted glycerin shipped from Spain and used in preparing medicine here condemned Tuesday’s decision by Spain’s top criminal court to shut off further legal claims against the exporter. The court in Madrid upheld a lower court decision to discontinue a probe into the 2006 deaths which occurred after Barcelona-based Rasfer imported 9,000 liters of glycerin from China, and then sent it on to Panama where it was used to make sugar-free syrup expectorant for hypertension and diabetes. The syrup was contaminated with diethylene glycol. “This legal decision, which offends the dignity of the Panamanian people, is both irresponsible and absurd,” said Gabriel Pascual, the chairman of the victims’ committee. A lower Spanish court ruled in April that there was no criminal intent on behalf of Rasfer, which it said was only an intermediary. Pascual said more than 10,000 people were contaminated.
CHILE
Allende committed suicide
Experts studying the remains of former president Salvador Allende concluded he committed suicide as soldiers involved in a 1973 coup closed in on the presidential palace, the late leader’s daughter said on Tuesday. “The conclusion is the same one that the Allende family had already reached,” Senator Isabel Allende said. “On September 11, 1973, faced with extreme circumstances, he made the decision to take his own life instead of being humiliated.” The government exhumed his remains in May, hoping to resolve the controversy over whether he committed suicide or was murdered during the coup that swept General Augusto Pinochet to power.
PERU
Soldiers killed in clash
Two soldiers were killed and two others wounded when army patrols clashed with remnants of the once-powerful Shining Path guerrillas in the southeast, the military joint command said on Tuesday. The victims were army sergeants from the Union Mantaro base that were leading patrols into the jungle searching for guerrillas, the military said. Soldiers will “intensify the search for the criminal terrorists in the zone,” the military said.
UNITED STATES
Gates to write memoirs
Former secretary of defense Robert Gates will pen two books, a memoir expected to be released in 2013 and another about his philosophy on leadership, publisher Alfred A. Knopf said on Tuesday. Gates, 67, departed as Pentagon chief in June after four-and-a-half years serving under former president George W. Bush and President Barack Obama. “I want to tell my story of constant conflict abroad and in Washington. I will share insights gleaned from my experience of working for two very different presidents in two administrations of very different political stripes,” Gates said in a statement.
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