INDIA
Thousands flee riots
Tens of thousands of villagers have fled their homes in fear of rioting that has killed at least 18 people in recent days in the remote northeast state of Assam, police said yesterday. An additional 10 people have gone missing since the clashes over land rights erupted in western Kokrajhar District between the region’s ethnic Bodo community and Muslim settlers, Assam Police Chief J.N. Choudhury said. The violence has spread to two neighboring districts. Police have discovered bodies hacked by machetes.
JAPAN
Osprey deployment draws ire
The US military’s Osprey aircraft arrived early yesterday as residents rallied against their deployment after recent crashes raised safety concerns. Live TV footage showed MV-22s being unloaded from a cargo ship at the US Marines’ base in Iwakuni. Protesters in a dozen small boats demonstrated against the controversial aircraft’s arrival, chanting: “We don’t want the dangerous Osprey!” and “Osprey, go back to America.”
AUSTRALIA
‘Hitman scam’ hits phones
Police across the nation warned mobile phone users yesterday to ignore a text message sent to “a large number of people” threatening death if they did not pay A$5,000 (US$5,150). “Sum1 paid me to kill you. get spared, 48hrs to pay $5000. If you inform the police or anybody, death is promised … E-mail me now: killerking247@yahoo.com,” read the text. It prompted hundreds of calls to authorities from worried recipients. Police in the states of New South Wales, Western Australia, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania all issued statements telling recipients not to be alarmed. Queensland police said the hoax was commonly referred to as “the hitman scam.”
INDONESIA
Sex-tape star out of jail
One of the country’s best-known pop stars has been released from prison on parole after serving two years over a sex-tape scandal. A prison official says hundreds of fans gathered outside the jail yesterday, chanting Nazril “Ariel” Irham’s name and singing his songs as he walked out. Ariel, lead singer of the popular band Peterpan, was sentenced to three-and-a-half years behind bars after sex videos with his celebrity girlfriends hit the Internet. The 30-year-old star was the first celebrity to be charged under a strict anti-pornography law. The law went into effect in 2008, despite strong opposition. Ariel was arrested in June 2010 and said the tapes were stolen and posted online without his knowledge.
PHILIPPINES
Mass grave discovered
The human rights commission said yesterday that it would investigate a report by the military that it has exhumed a mass grave containing at least 30 suspected victims of a 1980s communist rebel purge. Loretta Ann Rosales, chairwoman of the Commission on Human Rights, said her office would look into the mass grave, but that it is too early to say whether the remains found in northern Quezon Province were victims of a rebel purge. Soldiers and policemen on Sunday unearthed at least 30 skeletal remains of people believed slain by New People’s Army (NPA) rebels as suspected military spies in the 1980s, army spokesman Major Harold Cabunoc said. The remains were exhumed from a shallow grave discovered by a farmer in San Francisco town, he said. Cabunoc said some of the skeletons bore marks of torture, including cracked skulls.
MEXICO
Thousands protest vote
Thousands of people marched through Mexico City on Sunday to denounce the July 1 election of Enrique Pena Nieto as president, though the protest was smaller than one held earlier this month. Pena Nieto’s capture of the presidency for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has been challenged by his rival, leftist runner-up Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who alleges the PRI resorted to vote-buying and money laundering to win. Lopez Obrador is seeking to invalidate the PRI victory at the federal electoral tribunal, and the former mayor of Mexico City has pledged to keep the pressure up on Pena Nieto with rallies around the country starting at the end of this month. Officials in the capital estimated about 30,000 people turned out for Sunday’s protest, less than half the number seen at an anti-Pena Nieto demonstration there on July 7.
UNITED STATES
Pickup crash kills 11
A pickup truck jammed with suspected illegal immigrants crashed into a tree along a rural Texas highway on Sunday, killing 11 passengers and injuring 12 others, police said. The one-vehicle crash on Highway 59 near Goliad, Texas, about 130km south of San Antonio near the Gulf of Mexico coastline, was the second fatal accident in the past three months that involved human smuggling in the region. In Sunday’s fatal accident, police said the 23 people riding in the Ford pickup truck were suspected of being illegal immigrants. The driver lost control and crashed into a tree, Louann Presas of the Texas Department of Public Safety said. Injured victims were transported to hospitals in Victoria, Corpus Christi and San Antonio, Presas said.
UNITED STATES
Bear shops at Sears
Shoppers at a Sears department store in Pennsylvania were evacuated after an unwanted guest — a young female bear — wandered in over the weekend, local media said. The animal became trapped on Saturday night after entering the Sears store in the Pittsburgh Mills mall, located northeast of the city of Pittsburgh, through the automatic doors, the reports said. Shopper Matt Marcinik told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that he had seen the bear running across the mall’s parking lot before it went into the store. “It was running up and down the aisles,” Marcinik told the newspaper. “It darted past several people. They didn’t even know it was a bear.” Wildlife officials shot the roughly 57kg bear — which was wearing a tracking device — with a tranquilizer and captured it. No injuries were reported.
LIBYA
Kidnappers release official
The president of the country’s Olympic Committee said hours after he returned home on Sunday that his kidnapping remains a mystery, but that authorities promised to investigate the case. Committee chief Ahmed Nabil al-Taher al-Alam was released unharmed a week after unknown gunmen abducted him from his car in the capital. “It will be become clearer in the coming days. They raised no issue and they made no requests,” he said. Al-Alam said his kidnappers posed as officials when they took him near his office on Tripoli. They later released him in Misrata, and rebels helped bring him back to Tripoli in coordination with security officials. “It is a mystery. Investigation is promised and may this be a good omen to end these kidnappings,” he said.
‘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