CHINA
Bird flu kills man
The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed a 31-year-old man, the second fatality reported in the southwest. The Guizhou provincial health department said on its Web site that the man died of multiple organ failure two days ago at a hospital in Guiyang. The man was the second person to have died in Guiyang after contracting bird flu earlier this month. The first fatality was a 21-year-old woman. Xinhua news agency says both patients had close contacts with birds. Xinhua says 110 people who had contact with the patients have been released from quarantine.
INDIA
Sisters’ killers hunted
Police were searching villages in the west on Friday for suspects in the rape and killing of three young sisters, as a country still angry over the fatal gang rape of a woman on a New Delhi bus in December last year faces another heinous sexual attack. The bodies of the sisters, aged 7, 9 and 11, were found on Feb. 16 in a village well in Bhandara District in Maharashtra after they had gone missing from school two days earlier, police officer Abhinav Deshmukh said. The area is more than 1,000km south of New Delhi. Police did not take the case seriously and did nothing for several days until villagers held protests, the victims’ mother said. Ten teams of 30 investigators were working on the case and that he was confident they would find the killers soon, Deshmukh said on Friday. Police first dismissed the deaths as accidental, the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency reported. Villagers forced shops to close, burned tires and blocked a national highway in the area for hours earlier this week, demanding justice. Police eventually registered a case of rape and murder after a post-mortem of the girls found that they had been sexually abused and brutally killed, PTI said. One police officer has been suspended.
CAMBODIA
Bears found in factory
Two rare Malayan sun bears have been rescued after being discovered in an abandoned garment factory, a zoo official said on Friday. The male and female bears were rescued by officials from the Phnom Tamao Zoo and the Wildlife Alliance, who found them in the factory in Kandal Province last week, zoo director Nhek Rattanak Pich said. “The bears were left with no food and no one to care for them after the factory owner fled the country,” the Wildlife Alliance said on its Web site. Local authorities had called them after the bears were found in purpose-built cages at the factory, which closed without notice in December last year, the group said. The bears are now being cared for at the zoo, its director said, adding that he did not know why they had been kept at the factory. Bears are among many species that have been decimated by wildlife trafficking in Asia, which is fueled in large part by China’s appetite for exotic meats and animal parts for traditional medicine.
INDONESIA
Ruling party chair resigns
The chairman of Indonesia’s ruling party, Anas Urbaningrum, announced his resignation yesterday after the country’s anti-graft body named him a suspect in a multimillion-dollar corruption case. “I quit as the chairman of the Democratic Party,” he told reporters in a press conference. Urbaningrum, aged 43, was named a suspect two days ago for allegedly receiving “gifts or a promise of gifts” in a graft case linked to the construction of the Hambalang sports center project near Jakarta, worth about 1.17 trillion rupiah (US$120.5 million).
GREECE
Torrential rain floods Athens
Torrential rainfall in the capital on Friday crippled traffic, inundated basements and streets, and was blamed for the death of woman whose car was trapped in floodwater, authorities said. The overnight storm swept across greater Athens, flooding hundreds of homes, causing blackouts in parts of the city and forcing authorities to close major roads and a central subway station. “We have many, many problems — it’s hard to know where to begin describing it,” Deputy Fire Chief Vassilis Papageorgiou said. “We have more than 60 crews working to get people out of stranded vehicles.” The fire department said it received about 1,500 calls to pump out water in greater Athens. During five hours of heavy rainfall, more than 100mm fell in some parts of the city — more than the monthly average of 50mm. In parliament, a worker clearing water from the roof of the main assembly hall during a session tripped and went through a glass skylight, but was pulled to safety by a policeman. The accident occurred as Cabinet members were preparing to answer questions. “The worker could have landed on our heads,” Sports Minister Yiannis Ioannidis said.
RUSSIA
Mammoth skeleton found
The rare remains of a prehistoric species of southern mammoth, whose giant tusks stretched more than 1m long, have been uncovered in the south of the country, news agency Itar-Tass reported. It is the eighth known find of a full skeleton of the gargantuan mammal — which stood at an estimated height of 4m. The mammoth was discovered when a cliff collapsed in the mountainous province of Kabardino-Balkaria in the North Caucasus. Paleontologists said the remote area is so full of the bones of prehistoric beasts that local highlanders have been collecting them for years. “It is very likely that we are not only talking about a single skeleton, but a whole graveyard of prehistoric animals. Locals use some of the backbones as stools,” Viktor Kotlyarov told Tass this week. One of the largest beasts to roam Earth, the southern mammoth is thought to more closely resemble today’s elephants than its furry northern cousin, the woolly mammoth.
UNITED KINGDOM
Priests should marry: cleric
Britain’s most senior Roman Catholic cleric says priests should be allowed to marry and have children. Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who heads the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, says the requirement for priestly celibacy is “not of divine origin” and could be reconsidered. He told BBC Scotland that “the celibacy of the clergy, whether priests should marry — Jesus didn’t say that.” He said on Friday that he would be “very happy” if priests were able to consider getting married. O’Brien will form part of the conclave of cardinals that chooses the next pontiff, following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI.
CANADA
Avalanche kills skier
Police say an avalanche that swept down the backside of the Revelstoke Mountain Resort in southeastern British Columbia caught three skiers, killing one of them. Royal Canadian Mounted Police Corporal Dan Moskaluk said the group was skiing in an out-of-bounds area when the avalanche happened on Friday. Resort general manager Rob Elliot says the three were part of a group of five or six men. Moskaluk says other members of the group were able to rescue two of the three people involved, but the third person was found dead. The skiers were not immediately identified.
‘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