CHINA
Baby-napper gets death
A Chinese court says it has sentenced a woman to death for trafficking and abducting 223 infants from late 2009 to August 2010.The Qujing Intermediate People’s Court in southwest China’s Yunnan Province said yesterday in a statement posted on its official Web site that Jiang Kaizhi was the leader of a trafficking ring that abducted and bought infants from the province and transported them to be sold in central China’s Henan Province. The court says 35 others involved in the trafficking ring were sentenced on Friday to prison for terms ranging from three years to life.
THAILAND
Two Canadians found dead
The bodies of two Canadian sisters have been found in a hotel room on the popular tourist resort island of Phi Phi, Thai police said yesterday, without revealing the suspected cause of death. The sisters, aged 26 and 20, were found dead on Friday afternoon by hotel staff on the Andaman sea island, 800km south of Bangkok. “Their bodies were found a little after midday [Friday]. They were sisters,” said Lieutenant Pongpan Waiyawat of the island’s police force. “We have to wait for the post mortem to determine the cause of death, but based on initial investigations there’s no sign of violence in their room.”
INDIA
Dozens die in bus plunge
At least 32 pilgrims were killed and more than 20 injured yesterday when their bus plunged off a bridge in western India, the Press Trust of India reported. The pilgrims were returning from a visit to the popular Shirdi Saibaba temple, built in honor of an Indian guru, when the accident occurred before dawn in Maharashtra State’s Osmanabad District, police said. “We had to struggle to rescue survivors and retrieve the victims’ bodies from water,” a police official said. Nearly 135,000 people, or 366 a day, died on India’s roads in 2010, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.
BANGLADESH
Reporter stabbed to death
Police say that unidentified men have stabbed a journalist to death apparently for his reports on the illegal drug trade in the southwest. Local police chief A.K.M. Faruk Hossain said yesterday that the attack on Zamal Uddin took place late on Friday at Kashipur Bazar in Jessore District bordering India. The area is 140km west of the capital, Dhaka. Hossain says the reporter was rushed to hospital with severe injuries and later declared dead. Uddin worked for the Bengali-language Gramer Kagoj daily. The police chief says Uddin had recently filed a complaint with police seeking security after he was threatened for his articles on the illicit drug trade.
BANGLADESH
One dead in bridge collapse
One person was killed and up to 10 were missing after several vehicles plunged into a canal as a small bridge collapsed in Bangladesh’s northeast on Friday night, police said. Six trucks, a microbus and an auto-rickshaw were on the bridge when it caved in, making a loud noise and plunging the vehicles into a canal at Companyganj, about 200km from the capital, police said. “We’ve recovered one dead body and rescued 15 persons alive. The rescued persons were sent to local hospitals,” district police chief Shakhawat Hossain said. Hossain could not give the exact number of missing people as police did not know how many passengers the lorries were carrying, which had been transporting stones from a nearby quarry.
NIGERIA
Soldiers kill ‘militants’
An official says soldiers have killed four people in a raid on a suspected media center belonging to the radical Boko Haram sect in the north of the country. Army spokesman Lieutenant Iweha Ikedichi said the soldiers stormed a house in a residential area of Kano City on Friday and shot dead four suspected members of the sect. Ikedichi said the soldiers found 12 laptops and two scanners, leading them to believe the house was a media center for the sect, which has held telephone conference calls with journalists. He said they also found a gun, some ammunition and explosives.
IRAQ
ISI claims bomb campaign
Al-Qaeda affiliate the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) has claimed responsibility for a wave of bombings across the country that killed 72 people during a Shiite pilgrimage, the SITE Monitoring Service said yesterday. US-based SITE said the ISI, in a statement posted on jihadist forums, dubbed the attacks the “blessed Wednesday invasion.” Coordinated attacks took place nationwide on Wednesday, leaving 72 people dead and more than 250 wounded, marking the deadliest day in almost 10 months. They came as pilgrims headed to shrines to mark the death of Imam Musa Kadhim.
EGYPT
Bedouins release captive
Bedouins who kidnapped a Singaporean tourist in the Sinai Peninsula on Friday released him after several hours, a security source said. The Bedouins were demanding the release of one of their tribesmen arrested for possession of drugs, security officials said. The freeing of the tourist, one of a group of 20 visiting Sinai, was confirmed by the official news agency MENA, which said it came after “efforts by the security forces in coordination with the chiefs of tribes.” The tourist was abducted in central Sinai where several foreigners have been kidnapped over the past months by Bedouins demanding the release of tribesmen they feel have been unjustly detained.
TOGO
Dozens wounded in protests
The political opposition says dozens of people have been wounded and arrested in three days of protests in the West African nation. Opposition coalition leader Zeus Atta Mensah Ajavon said on Thursday that at least 56 people were seriously hurt this week. The government said more than 30 police and security officers were also wounded. The nation is scheduled to hold legislative and municipal elections in October, but Togolese opposition parties have expressed disagreement about a new formula for the redrawing of boundaries for constituencies.
UNITED STATES
US, Palestinians to meet
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat will meet with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton this week in a bid to try to breathe new life into stalled peace talks, an official said on Friday. Clinton had already met with Israeli negotiator Yitzhak Molho and “she will see Erakat next week,” Department of State spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said. Clinton recently talked with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and separately with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. While direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians remain in deep freeze, top officials from both sides have been holding a quiet dialogue on a range of issues, including an exchange of letters between Netanyahu and Abbas.
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
‘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