CHINA
Ai told to shutter webcams
Dissident artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未) said he was pressured by authorities into closing the webcams filming him live at home, the Hong Kong-based newspaper Ming Pao reported on Thursday. Ai told the BBC recently that he set up four live webcams and the Web site “weiweicam.com” on Tuesday for people who are concerned about him after he was released in June last year, the Chinese-language daily said. In response to supporters who left Twitter messages showing concern for Ai, he said he did not close the site of his own volition on Wednesday, but that the webcams would not reopen.
CHINA
Six Uighurs on ‘terror’ list
The Ministry of Public Security has placed six Uighurs on a “terror” list, accusing them of involvement in terrorist training camps and of inciting attacks in Xinjiang. The ministry said the men, whose names identify them as Uighurs, were members of the outlawed East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), blaming one for orchestrating violent attacks in the city of Kashgar in July last year. It said in a statement late on Thursday it had frozen the funds and assets of the six men, whose whereabouts are not known.
NORTH KOREA
Kim visits anti-US unit
Leader Kim Jong-un has visited a naval unit credited with anti-US feats. The visit comes as Pyongyang prepares to launch a long-range rocket later this month despite US warnings. The North’s official media yesterday said that the unit visited by leader Kim sank the USS Baltimore during the 1950s Korean War. Military historians dispute that claim. The official media also credited the unit with capturing the USS Pueblo in 1968. That ship was seized while on a spying mission off the North’s coast. It is still displayed in Pyongyang.
AFGHANISTAN
Tanker blaze kills seven
Seven people were burnt to death yesterday when a fuel tanker supplying a NATO base crashed and set their vehicle on fire, officials said. Panjwayi District security chief Sardar Mohammad and Kandahar police chief Abdul Raziq said there was no insurgent activity at the time, and residents later pulled back from claims that the Taliban had attacked with rocket-propelled grenades. “A fuel tanker supplying fuel for ISAF [the International Security Assistance Force] overturned and caught fire, and simultaneously a civilian minivan was passing nearby also set ablaze,” Mohammad said. Seven people were killed and three others who were injured were taken to hospital, he said.
PHILIPPINES
Three wounded in blasts
Two explosions rocked the island of Palawan on Thursday, leaving three residents injured, police said. The authorities said they did not know the motive of the late-afternoon attacks, which occurred during the peak tourist season outside a hotel in El Nido town and near a bus depot in Puerto Princesa. A hotel cook was injured in the El Nido blast, which occurred 10 minutes before the other explosion slightly injured a tricycle driver and a woman in Puerto Princesa, about 175km away, a police report said. “The type of explosives used were not yet determined as of this time,” according to a report by local police sent to the regional police headquarters in Mindoro. The El Nido blast struck a hotel called the Entalula Beach Resort. No tourists were reported hurt.
GUYANA
Suriname pardons president
Suriname’s president defended a new amnesty law that will end his murder trial, saying on Thursday it will let his South American country resolve lingering bitterness over its military dictatorship and civil war. “This is a new beginning,” Surinamese President Desi Bouterse said during a visit to neighboring Guyana. “This amnesty is intended to heal the whole nation, not just one part of it.” The amnesty will end the trial of Bouterse and 24 associates, who were charged with abducting and killing 15 prominent political opponents to his dictatorship in December 1982. The prime minister of the Netherlands, Suriname’s former colonial ruler, denounced the decision to grant amnesty to Bouterse and recalled the country’s ambassador in protest.
UNITED STATES
Vietnamese buys tiny town
The town of Buford, Wyoming — population 1 — was sold for US$900,000 to an unidentified buyer from Vietnam on Thursday after an 11-minute Internet auction that attracted worldwide interest. The tiny Western town garnered online viewers and bidders from 46 countries for the sale of 4 hectares with a convenience store, gas station and modular home located in southeastern Wyoming between Cheyenne and Laramie. The buyer, who wished to remain anonymous, flew to Wyoming from Vietnam for a purchase he likened to “the American dream,” according to a statement released by Williams & Williams, the Oklahoma auction house handling the sale. Don Sammons, long the town’s sole resident, moved with his wife, Terry, from Los Angeles to the Buford area in 1980. In 1992, six years after his wife died, Sammons purchased the town. Sammons decided to auction off the Interstate 80 hamlet, billed as “the nation’s smallest town,” to move to Colorado to be near his son.
UNITED STATES
Marine may be dismissed
A military board says a marine who criticized President Barack Obama on his Facebook page has committed misconduct and should be dismissed. The Marine Corps administrative board made the decision on Thursday after a daylong hearing at Camp Pendleton for Sargent Gary Stein. During the hearing, prosecutor Captain John Torresala said Stein superimposed images of Obama’s face on a poster for the movie Jackass. Torresala argued that Stein’s behavior repeatedly violated Pentagon policy that limits the free speech rights of service members and said he should be dismissed after ignoring warnings from his superiors about his postings. The board’s recommendations go to a general who will either accept or deny them. Stein’s lawyers argued he was expressing his personal views and exercising his First Amendment rights.
ARGENTINA
Official denounces probe
Vice President Amado Boudou on Thursday denounced a judge’s investigation into alleged influence peddling, blaming media “mafias” for the accusations against him. Federal Judge Daniel Rafecas is probing whether Boudou, as economy minister in 2010, used his influence to award a government contract to print money to a printing firm, Ciccone Calcografica, and rescue it from bankruptcy. On Wednesday, the judge ordered a raid on Boudou’s luxury apartment in Buenos Aires’ Puerto Madero neighborhood. Clarin and La Nacion newspapers reported that investigators found an expense report from Ciccone’s president during the raid, showing the two men had a business relationship, which Boudou has vigorously denied.
‘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