CHINA
Tibetan monk self-immolates
An 18-year-old Tibetan Buddhist monk set himself on fire to protest Chinese rule — becoming at least the 21st to do so in the past year — and more than 1,000 people were trying to prevent police from taking his body, an overseas Tibet support group reported yesterday. Nangdrol self-immolated on Sunday outside his monastery in Aba County, where most of the immolations have occurred, the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet said. The group said Nangdrol shouted slogans for Tibetan independence and for the Dalai Lama. Nangdrol’s is the latest in what seem to be increasing numbers of immolations that have galvanized other monks and lay people to protest Chinese government controls over Tibetan society and the Buddhist religion. More than 1,000 people gathered at the monastery overnight to stand guard over the body, the group said.
AFGHANISTAN
Cold snap kills children
More than 40 people, most of them children, have frozen to death in what has been the coldest winter in years, a health official said yesterday. Health ministry spokesman Ghulam Sakhi Kargar said the government has recorded 41 deaths from freezing in three provinces — Kabul, Ghor and Badakhshan. All but three or four of those deaths were children, he said. Twenty-four of the deaths were in Kabul, mostly in camps for people who have fled fighting elsewhere in the country. The UN and the US aid agency have started distributing extra blankets, tarps and fuel to people living in 40 camps throughout the city, the US embassy said in a statement last week. Kargar said the ministry was establishing mobile clinics in response.
JAPAN
China tries to stop survey
The country’s coast guard was ordered by a Chinese ship to stop a marine survey in disputed waters on the weekend, officials said yesterday, the latest territorial row between the regional giants. The coast guard vessel was on Sunday conducting a two-day survey in waters about 170km north of Kumejima, part of Okinawa Prefecture, when Chinese authorities demanded they stop, the coast guard officials said. Beijing and Tokyo claim exclusive excavation rights of the Shirakaba or Chunxiao gas field, which lies in the disputed area in the East China Sea, where both sides’ economic zones overlap. The Chinese ship “demanded our ship by radio to stop the marine survey aimed at drawing nautical charts,” a coast guard spokesman said. “We replied to them that this was a legitimate activity as we were in Japan’s exclusive economic zone and we have been continuing the survey up until now.”
NEW ZEALAND
Aftershocks disinter bones
Constant aftershocks in Christchurch have pushed human remains up from burial plots in one of the quake-ravaged city’s graveyards, a report said on Sunday. In a grim reminder that the ground in Christchurch remains unstable 12 months on from a quake that killed 185 people last year, TV images showed what appeared to be human bones in Bromley Cemetery. The remains, possibly rib and leg bones, were on the top of burial plots found by a group of people visiting the graveyard on Sunday, TV3 reported. One of the group, Cassie, said at least 10 graves were affected. Christchurch City Council told the TV station it was the first report it had received of remains being disinterred by the aftershocks, about 10,000 of which have rocked the city since September 2010.
UNITED STATES
Oscars lack diversity
A study of Academy Awards voters has found that it’s not a very diverse group that hands out Hollywood’s highest honors. The Los Angeles Times found that 94 percent of the 5,765 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are white and 77 percent are men. Blacks and Hispanics account for only 2 percent each of academy members. The newspaper’s findings were reported on Sunday, a week before the Oscars. The Times reported that through interviews with members and their representatives, it confirmed the identities of about 5,100 voters — 89 percent of academy membership. The findings are in line with industry employment overall, in which whites and males dominate, but academy president Tom Sherak said the group was trying to diversify its membership rolls.
UNITED KINGDOM
‘Sun’ coming out on Sunday
The Sunday version of Rupert Murdoch’s top-selling British tabloid the Sun will hit the shelves for the first time on Feb. 26, News International announced to staff on Sunday. “Rupert Murdoch said during his visit on Friday that a new Sunday title would be published ‘very soon’ — and that is a week from today,” an internal memo sent to staff at the company said. Murdoch visited News International’s London offices on Friday and announced he would launch the Sunday version of the tabloid daily, vowing to stand by demoralized staff despite the arrest of senior reporters over bribery claims. The media tycoon said he would extend his stay in Britain “to oversee the launch” of the new publication. Murdoch earlier said that a criminal investigation into claims that journalists paid police and other public officials for information would not cause the Sun to suffer the same fate as its sister paper, the News of the World, which closed in July last year over a phone-hacking scandal.
MOROCCO
Few join democracy rally
Several hundred people gathered in Casablanca’s main square to mark the one-year anniversary of the kingdom’s pro-democracy movement. The low turnout on Sunday was in sharp contrast to the tens of thousands that once flocked to the February 20th movement’s banner early last year and even the thousands that were still demonstrating last month. As Morocco’s answer to the Arab Spring uprisings that swept the region last year, Feb. 20 prompted the king to amend the constitution and hold early elections. Following elections, which were won by an Islamist opposition party promising reforms, demonstrations petered out. Activists said many of their demands remain unmet, including fighting corruption, release prisoners of conscience and decreasing the absolute power of the king.
UNITED KINGDOM
Houston back in top 40
Three of Whitney Houston’s best known singles soared back into the top 40 pop chart on Sunday following her death in a California hotel room. Houston’s version of the Dolly Parton ballad I Will Always Love You entered the weekly rundown at No. 14, while I Wanna Dance with Somebody was in 20th place. One Moment in Time, a song Houston recorded for the 1988 Olympics in South Korea, was a new entry at No. 40, according to the Official Charts Co, which compiles the list. A collection of Houston’s greatest hits entered the album chart at No. 7. Houston was found dead in a hotel in Beverly Hills on Feb. 11. The cause of death has yet to be determined. Her funeral service was held last Saturday in Newark, New Jersey.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of