CHINA
Tibetans protest on holiday
Reports say several hundred Tibetans have protested in a province bordering Tibet on National Day, but there was no violence. Radio Free Asia said yesterday that the protest happened after officials took down a Tibetan flag and a picture of the exiled Dalai Lama on Saturday, the 62nd anniversary of communist rule. A notice on a Web site of the Tibetan government-in-exile said the protest was in Seda City, Sichuan Province. It had no further details. The area was hit by unrest after deadly riots rocked Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, in March 2008.
CAMBODIA
Flash floods kill hundreds
The government says flash floods have killed at least 150 people in the nation since August. The floods are the worst to hit the country since 2000, when 374 people were killed. Government disaster agency spokesman Keo Vy said yesterday that flood waters along the Mekong River and other places have damaged 271,000 hectares of rice fields, as well as 904 schools and 361 Buddhist temples. Hundreds of people have been killed across Southeast Asia, China, Japan and South Asia in the last four months from prolonged monsoon flooding, typhoons and storms. The government in Thailand says heavy floods there have also killed 206 people since August.
RUSSIA
Dozens detained after rally
Police say they have detained dozens of anti-gay protesters and gay rights activists during a gay pride rally in central Moscow. Saturday’s protest was one of the few gay rights events sanctioned by authorities. In recent years, several attempts to hold gay pride marches in Moscow and other cities have been blocked by police, Russian Orthodox Church activists and soccer fans. Moscow police spokesman Anatoly Lastovetsky said 40 people were detained on Saturday. He told reporters that police were “finding out whether [the detained] were part of the rally or the people who tried to thwart it.” During the rally, several men were seen trying to pelt the protesters with tomatoes and unfurling posters with pejorative remarks about homosexuality.
INDONESIA
Terrorist suspect caught
The anti-terrorism squad has arrested one of the country’s most wanted Muslim militants for allegedly plotting suicide attacks. Local police chief Lieutenant Colonel Lufti Martadian said yesterday that Beni Asri was captured without a fight on Friday near his parents’ house in Solok, West Sumatra Province. He says that Asri was flown to Jakarta hours after he was arrested for allegedly helping plot a suicide bombing in a church in the Central Java town of Solo on Sept. 25 that injured 22 worshippers. The 26-year-old was one of five men wanted for allegedly plotting an April suicide bombing that injured 30 police officers praying in a mosque in the West Java town of Cirebon.
CHINA
Bus crash toll climbs
The death toll from a bus crash on the first day of the National Day holiday has climbed to 16, the National Tourism Association said yesterday. It said the crash a day earlier in Hubei Province also left one person missing and 17 others injured. There were 34 people on the bus. The association said in a statement that the bus plunged into the Xiangxi River, a tributary of the Yangtze River. It did not give a cause for the accident.
VENEZUELA
Chavez backs Qaddafi, Assad
President Hugo Chavez on Saturday reiterated his support for ousted Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi and embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, calling them “brothers.” “I ask God for the life of our brother Qaddafi ... No one knows where Qaddafi is; I think he went to the desert,” Chavez told official television VTV. The 57-year-old leader has defended Qaddafi since the start of the uprising against his regime in February, accusing NATO of using the conflict to gain control over Libya’s oil. Chavez has refused to recognize Libya’s new interim leadership, ridiculing its UN representative Ibrahim Dabbashi as a “puppet” and a “dummy.”
UNITED STATES
Shooting suspect killed
A man suspected in the fatal shootings of a city councilman and a county land trust official was shot and killed on Saturday after a massive manhunt in the redwood forests of Northern California. Sheriff Thomas Allman said Aaron Bassler was shot seven times about 10km east of Fort Bragg after he was sniffed out in the forest by a bloodhound tracking a nearby burglary. Three members of Sacramento County’s SWAT team were in the trees above Bassler and when they saw him coming toward them on a timber trail, they shot him. Allman initially said Bassler raised his gun at the deputies as they approached, but later said he raised his rifle as he was falling from the gunfire. Bassler, 35, had been sought since Fort Bragg councilman Jere Melo and a second man separately confronted him while investigating reports of an illegal marijuana farm outside of town. Police said Bassler was cultivating about 400 poppy plants and was holed up in a makeshift bunker when he fired on the 69-year-old Melo and a coworker who escaped and called for help.
UNITED STATES
CIA contractor charged
A CIA contractor freed by Pakistani authorities after the families of two men he killed in a shootout agreed to accept a US$2.34 million “blood money” payment was charged on Saturday after authorities said he got into a fight over a shopping center parking spot. Deputies responding to an altercation between two men outside an Einstein Bagel in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, took Raymond Davis into custody on Saturday morning, Sheriff’s Lieutenant Glenn Peitzmeier said. He was charged with third-degree assault and disorderly conduct, both misdemeanors. Peitzmeier said the victim, who was not identified, refused medical treatment at the scene.
UNITED STATES
FTAs could move ahead
President Barack Obama may send to Congress as early as today three long-stalled free-trade agreements (FTA) with South Korea, Panama and Colombia, a senior administration official said on Saturday. The agreements have been awaiting congressional approval for more than four years. Obama has been holding off sending them to Capitol Hill in hopes of getting stronger assurances that a worker-retraining program known as Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) would be approved by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. The Democratic-controlled Senate recently passed a revamped version of the half-century-old TAA program. Obama has worked over the past year to address his fellow Democrats’ concerns about the pacts, which were each signed under former Republican president George W. Bush. A new problem emerged when Republicans balked at renewing certain TAA program benefits that expired early this year.
‘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