INDIA
Seven die in train-car fire
Forensic investigators were trying to determine yesterday what caused a fire that engulfed two train cars and killed seven passengers, including an Australian researcher. The fire broke out before dawn on Tuesday as the express train was traveling from Kolkata to the northern city of Dehradun in Jharkhand State. The train’s engineers managed detach the two blazing cars from the rest of the train, but were unable to save seven people, who died from suffocation or burns. The victims included a four-year-old girl and a 21-year-old Australian woman.
INDONESIA
Orangutan killers arrested
Two plantation workers have been arrested for allegedly killing at least 20 endangered orangutans and proboscis monkeys as a means of “pest control,” police said yesterday. A police spokesman said the suspects admitted to chasing down the primates with dogs, then shooting, stabbing or hacking them to death with machetes. The men allegedly told police the owners of several palm oil plantations on Borneo island paid them US$100 for every orangutan killed and US$20 for every long-nosed proboscis monkey. The goal was to protect lucrative crops from being raided.
AUSTRALIA
Asylum-seekers sew up lips
Three asylum-seekers sewed their lips together and two more overdosed on drugs to protest against their lengthy detention in Australia, a refugee campaigner said yesterday. The five Kurdish men held at Darwin’s Northern Immigration Detention Centre belong to the minority Faili group and are stateless, Refugees Action Coalition spokesman Ian Rintoul said. “They sewed their lips together,” he said. “It’s a protest, they are pretty determined.” He said it was not a hunger strike and the men were taking fluids. The pair who took the drug overdose were believed to be out of danger after having their stomachs pumped, he added. The immigration department confirmed that three men at the Darwin center “are engaging in protest actions” involving minor self-harm and that two others had been hospitalized for self-harming. Rintoul said all five men, who had spent up to 21 months in detention, had been rejected as refugees.
CHINA
Child rapist executed
A man convicted of luring and then raping 14 young schoolgirls in cars, hotels, karaoke bars and underground car parks has been executed, media reported yesterday. Chen Weijun (陳偉軍) was put to death in Zhejiang Province’s Lishui City on Tuesday, the Beijing News reported, citing an announcement from the eastern city’s intermediate court. According to the rights group Amnesty International, China executes more people every year than the rest of the world combined.
PHILIPPINES
Roadside bombs defused
Authorities in the restive south said they defused five roadside bombs near the site of a 2009 massacre on the day the relatives of the 57 victims are marking the second anniversary of the killings. There were no casualties reported, but tensions were running high. Provincial Governor Esmael Mangudadatu, whose relatives were among the dead, canceled a visit yesterday to the massacre site in Ampatuan township in Maguindanao Province saying: “We’re taking no chance.” It was not clear who was responsible for planting the explosives, but about 100 of the 197 people charged in the politically motivated killings are still at large.
UNITED NATIONS
Free Palestinian funds: UN
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appealed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to immediately resume the transfer of Palestinian tax and customs revenue to the Palestinians, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said. Ban also told Netanyahu during a telephone conversation on Tuesday that Israel’s new settlement building, including in East Jerusalem, undermines efforts to resume direct Palestinian-Israeli negotiations and violates international law, Nesirky said. Israel announced the new construction and suspended the payments — totaling about US$100 million that it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority — after the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization voted to grant Palestine full membership last month.
UKRAINE
Tymoshenko back in jail
Former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko was taken to hospital yesterday for a medical check-up and was then returned to police detention, an aide to the head of the nation’s prison service said. “She was taken [to hospital] for medical checks. The results are not yet known,” said the official, Ihor Andrushko. President Viktor Yanukovych promised on Tuesday to provide hospital treatment for his political opponent, who was sentenced last month to seven years in prison for abuse of office, after a human rights monitor expressed alarm at her condition. Tymoshenko, who was beaten narrowly by Yanukovych in a run-off for the presidency in February last year, says her trial is a vendetta by him aimed at neutralizing her as a political force in the country. The EU has largely taken her side, saying that her trial was politically motivated and it has called for her release.
FRANCE
Former first lady dies
Danielle Mitterrand, a member of the French Resistance and outspoken advocate for human rights who broke the mold as first lady alongside the nation’s first socialist president, has died. Mitterrand, 87, died overnight Monday to Tuesday after being hospitalized at Georges Pompidou Hospital in Paris for fatigue, said Rita Cristofari, spokeswoman for Mitterrand’s foundation France Libertes. Mitterrand, who often espoused left-leaning causes, was the wife of former president Francois Mitterrand. He died in 1995 after a 14-year term in office. For years, Danielle Mitterrand headed France Libertes, a non-profit foundation advocating human rights. She wrote extensively on behalf of Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolution and other Third World causes.
INDONESIA
Spanish pilot dies in crash
A small Cessna aircraft crashed yesterday while trying to land in the remote Papua region, killing the Spanish copilot and critically injuring the New Zealand pilot, rescue officials said. Susi Air’s Cessna Grand Caravan aircraft crash-landed on an airstrip in Paniai District after taking off from neighboring Nabire, local search-and-rescue chief Sumpeno Yuwono said. “The New Zealand pilot has been rescued to a hospital in Timika town and the body of the Spanish copilot was sent to a nearby airport,” he said, adding that the accident took place at about 9am. He said the cause of the crash was being investigated. Zulfiqar, another search-and-rescue official who like many Indonesians goes by a single name, said that the aircraft was flying food supplies to remote villages in Paniai. The sprawling Indonesian archipelago relies heavily on air transport and has a poor aviation safety record.
UNITED STATES
Obama fundraiser jailed
A former fundraiser for President Barack Obama was sentenced to 10-and-a-half years in jail on Tuesday for extorting millions of US dollars from firms seeking help from former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich. Obama has never been implicated in the corruption scandals which have roiled his adopted home state of Illinois in recent years. However, his Republican foes have tried to exploit his ties to influence peddler Antoin “Tony” Rezko, who was convicted of using his political clout to demand kickbacks in June 2008 — just a day after Obama clinched enough delegates to become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.
UNITED STATES
Informant faces legal woes
A new lawyer for a New York City man charged with crafting homemade bombs in a terror plot against police stations and post offices says a confidential informant in the case also has legal trouble. A person familiar with the matter says it is a minor marijuana charge. Attorney Lori Cohen said on Tuesday she is representing terror suspect Jose Pimentel, who previously had a Legal Aid Society lawyer. Cohen says she was told Legal Aid represented the informant in an unspecified other case, creating a conflict of interest.
UNITED STATES
Utah law challenged
President Barack Obama’s administration on Tuesday challenged a new immigration law in Utah, the fourth such law it has taken on, arguing it is unconstitutional and undercuts federal immigration authority, the Department of Justice said. Federal prosecutors said in a complaint filed in Utah that the law, called H.B. 497, “clearly violates the Constitution because it attempts to establish state-specific immigration policy.” The law sets out immigration enforcement measures that “interfere with the immigration priorities and practices of the federal government in a way which is not cooperative with the primary federal role in this area,” a department statement said.
UNITED STATES
Hendrix named best guitarist
Jimi Hendrix was named the greatest guitar player in history yesterday by Rolling Stone magazine in a list compiled by a panel of music experts and top guitar players. “Jimi Hendrix exploded our idea of what rock music could be: He manipulated the guitar, the whammy bar, the studio and the stage,” said Grammy-winning guitarist Tom Morello in the magazine, citing Hendrix’s Purple Haze and The Star-Spangled Banner as key tracks. Hendrix is joined by the likes of Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Keith Richards, Jimmy Page and Pete Townshend among the top 10, in a list laden with rock ‘n’ roll icons spanning decades.
UNITED STATES
Swearing doll irks parents
Children cradling a baby doll sold by Toys R Us will now have to play a new game — teaching their infant some manners. At least that’s the fear of parents outraged at what seems to be a doll babbling: “Hey crazy bitch.” However, the company says the tot, from the “You & Me Interactive Triplets” collection, is not potty mouthed. Company spokesperson Jennifer Albano said people have misconstrued entirely innocent gurgling noises. “Of course we would never sell a doll that uses profanity of any kind,” she said. Concerned parents are not so sure. “Return the dolls and boycott Toys R Us,” wrote Sue from Tulsa, Oklahoma, on the company’s Web site. Toys R Us does not plan a recall of the toys, which sold only in the US.
‘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
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
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