CHINA
No agreement on N Korea
Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶), Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak have issued a post-summit joint declaration that makes no reference to North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. Both Noda and Lee told reporters of the need to prevent “provocations” from Pyongyang after the main meeting on Sunday. However, a Japanese official said yesterday that the three nations were not able to agree on suitable wording for the 50-point declaration of cooperation issued after the summit. The official declined to go into detail about the disagreement over the wording, but China is generally believed to favor a cautious policy toward the regime.
CHINA
Fishing ban starts tomorrow
Beijing is set to enforce its annual fishing ban in the South China Sea, but the Philippines says it will not recognize the ban in waters both countries claim. The ban that begins tomorrow is meant to conserve resources and curb overfishing. Xinhua news agency cited a South China Fisheries Administration Bureau official on Sunday as saying the ban includes waters around Huangyan Island (黃岩島), which Manila calls Panatag Shoal and is known internationally as Scarborough Shoal. Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario says his nation does not recognize the Chinese ban and suggested Filipinos would continue to fish in its territorial waters. Ships from both nations have been standing off at the shoal since April 10.
MYANMAR
Security tightened for Lee
The government has tightened security for an official visit by South Korean President Lee Myung-bak yesterday, the first by a South Korean leader since an assassination attempt by North Korean commandos nearly 30 years ago. A statement from his office said Lee was flying first to Naypyitaw to meet with President Thein Sein as part of a two-day visit that “is expected to strengthen ties” between the Asian countries. Truckloads of riot police were stationed around Yangon, where Lee was to visit today and meet opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Security was particularly tight at the Martyr’s Mausoleum, a shrine to Aung San Suu Kyi’s father, where then-South Korean president Chun Doo-hwan was nearly killed in 1983. The bomb blast killed 21 people, 17 of them South Korean, including four Cabinet ministers and the South Korean ambassador. Chun was not hurt because he was stuck in traffic and arrived a few minutes late.
PHILIPPINES
Jeepney crash kills 11
Police in the north say a jeepney so overloaded that passengers were riding on the rooftop has plunged into a 150m deep ravine, killing 11 people and injuring another 10. Provincial police chief William Bequeno says the vehicle lost control on Sunday while negotiating a rough patch of a mountain road. The jeepney was carrying nearly 30 passengers.
AFGHANISTAN
Bomb blast kills nine
Authorities say a bomb has exploded at a market in the north, killing nine people, including a local official. The Ministry of the Interior says the bomb went off yesterday morning inside a shop in a market in Faryab Province’s Ghormuch District. The dead included a council member from a neighboring province. In a separate statement, the ministry said police killed 18 insurgents in operations across the country over the past 24 hours.
SWEDEN
Serial killer suspect on trial
The trial against a man charged with three counts of murder and 12 counts of attempted murder in a string of shootings that spread fear among immigrants in the city of Malmo has started. Peter Mangs, 40, appeared before the court yesterday and listened quietly as the charges were read. His defense lawyer has denied the charges. Mangs was arrested in November 2010 following a manhunt for a serial gunman police had linked to more than a dozen shootings in 2009 to 2010. Investigators later linked Mangs to two 2003 murders. The shootings spread jitters in Malmo — the nation’s third-largest city and one of the most ethnically diverse.
ESTONIA
Putin like Stalin: Kasparov
Chess legend Garry Kasparov on Sunday branded Russian President Vladimir Putin “an oligarch who wants to rule like Stalin” and urged the West not to think of him as a democratic leader. “My plea to the Western world is, please stop calling Putin a democratic leader. Putin is an oligarch who wants to rule the country like Stalin, but to live like a modern oligarch,” he told the Lennart Meri conference in Tallinn. The West should also “admit that the regime of Putin is the regime of oligarchs whose common slogan can be [summarized] as ‘lets steal together,’” the Soviet-era chess world champion turned opposition figure said. “Western leaders should also understand that the way Russia is ruled is so different from democratic order. When in the US the president has to humbly ask Congress for every dollar he wants to spend, in Russia Putin can move billions by his own choice without asking anyone else,” Kasparov said. A vocal critic of the Kremlin, Kasparova said he believed that any “ousting of the current president will most likely come from the circles of his own closest allies.”
SAUDI ARABIA
Gulf Arab envoys meet
Gulf Arab envoys gathered yesterday to discuss proposals for greater political and security cooperation in the wake of an Arab Spring uprising in Bahrain and worries about regional rival Iran. Yesterday’s meeting could support closer integration between Saudi Arabia and protest-wracked Bahrain, where Saudi-led forces were deployed last year to aid the embattled Sunni monarchy. However, more expansive union plans among the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council may face questions over how much influence would be handed to ultraconservative Saudi Arabia. The bloc has taken a hard line against Iran, which it blames for encouraging Bahrain’s 15-month Shiite-led uprising. The council also includes Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
GEORGIA
Five dead in flooding
Five people, including a mother and her two children, were killed when flooding brought by heavy rains destroyed houses overnight in the capital, Tbilisi, officials said on Sunday. The rains sent torrents of muddy water through the city’s rundown Ortachala District, where many people live in dilapidated housing. Local television showed buildings partially collapsed or submerged and cars overturned by the flood amid streets strewn with debris, as emergency services workers lifted residents to safety. Media reported that resident Ana Tskrialashvili and her two children aged five and six months were killed after being trapped in a small house when it was hit by flood waters.
PANAMA
Survivor sues US cruise line
A man who watched his two companions die while surviving at sea for 28 days in their small disabled boat has sued a US cruise line because one of its ships failed to help, his attorney said on Sunday. Attorney Edna Ramos said the lawsuit alleging negligence by Princess Cruise Lines was filed in a Florida state court on behalf of Adrian Vazquez. The 18-year-old Vazquez and companions Fernando Osorio, 16, and Elvis Oropeza, 31, set off for a night of fishing on Feb. 24 from Rio Hato on the Pacific coast. The boat’s motor broke down on the way back and the men drifted at sea for 16 days before seeing a cruise ship approach. Vazquez has said the men signaled for help, but the ship did not stop. Princess Cruises has claimed passengers never told the ship’s captain they saw a boat.
COLOMBIA
Rebels to release detainee
Marxist rebels holding French journalist Romeo Langlois hostage for almost a month said on Sunday they would free him, according to a Red Cross official. “We have received the statement directly from the group ... We are pleased with the announcement of the [planned] release and we are ready to help organize the operation anywhere and as soon as possible,” said Jordi Raich, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in the country. Raich said the group indicated it was prepared to free the Frenchman in a demobilized area to a group that would include ICRC representatives, a French envoy and mediator Piedad Cordoba.
YEMEN
Militants attack pipeline
Suspected al-Qaeda militants blew up a gas pipeline supplying the Balhaf export terminal in the Gulf of Aden, the second such attack in a month, a government official said on yesterday. “A gas pipeline was blown up near Mayfaa” in Shabwa Governorate in the southeast late on Sunday, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Al-Qaeda blew up the pipeline in response to the raids that targeted it” over the past week, the official said. The amount of damage to the pipeline was not immediately clear.
SUDAN
Airlift of S Sudanese begins
An airlift of up to 15,000 people of South Sudanese descent began yesterday from Khartoum, a correspondent said. The first plane chartered by the International Organization for Migration took off at 6:15am GMT carrying about 160 people. They are among a group of 12,000-15,000 people who were waiting to travel to their ancestral homeland in the South from the Kosti way-station south of Khartoum. Kosti became home to the biggest single concentration of people of South Sudanese descent awaiting transport and many have been living there in makeshift shelters or barn-like buildings.
BRAZIL
Drought sets off ‘water wars’
Severe drought gripping the northeast — the worst in a half-century — is taking its toll on more than 1,100 towns, even triggering fighting in rural areas, local media reported on Sunday. An average of one person a day is being killed in “water wars” in rural areas, while scores of animals are wasting away before perishing, the O Globo newspaper reported over the weekend. Many people in the area have lost half their livestock and the government has reduced forecasts for corn, soy and bean crops. In Pernambuco, 66 municipalities are on water emergencies, rivers have run completely dry and animals looking for water in the riverbed can only find the odd muddy puddle.
‘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