JAPAN
Teen allegedly killed mom
A teenager who allegedly killed his mother and chopped her body into pieces has told police he simply did not like her, and wanted to know more about dissection, reports have said. The 19-year-old allegedly dismembered his mother’s body in the bathroom of their apartment near Tokyo, cutting her into at least 15 pieces using kitchen knives, the Sankei Shimbun said on Saturday, citing unnamed police sources. The teenager then kept the body parts in the bathtub, which he filled with water, before starting to dump them piece by piece in plastic bags, the report said. He told police he “didn’t like her” and she was an “ordinary person,” the Sankei reported, quoting an unnamed investigator. He also said he was interested in the dissection of a human body, the Yomiuri Shimbun and Mainichi Shimbun reported. The suspect, who has not been named as he is still a minor under Japanese law, was arrested on March 14 after a relative visited the apartment and found some of the body parts. The murder is believed to have been committed about two weeks previously.
CHINA
Hailstorms kill 12
Hailstorms that hit Guangdong and Hunan provinces last week killed 12 people, injured hundreds more and caused tens of millions of dollars in damage. Xinhua news agency says nine people were killed in Dongguan in Guangdong after a Wednesday hailstorm. It says 272 others were injured in the storm, which caused economic losses of 357 million yuan (US$57.5 million). Three other people died from hailstorms that began on Tuesday in Hunan, where 1,900 houses have collapsed, Xinhua said on Saturday.
INDIA
Poachers kill rare rhinos
A gang of poachers killed a rare one-horned rhino at a wildlife park in the northeast, taking to 15 the number of such beasts slaughtered this year, an official said yesterday. Heavily armed poachers fired at the rhino late on Saturday inside Assam state’s Kaziranga National Park and its horn was gouged out, just a day after another was killed, a wildlife official said. “Two rhinos have been killed in two days and it is a matter of concern for all of us,” a park ranger said, requesting not to be named since the state government has gagged officials from speaking to the media. “Poachers used AK-47 and .303 rifles to shoot dead the rhino. We have recovered empty cartridges from the site of the incident,” the official said. Kaziranga has fought a sustained battle against rhino poachers who kill the animals for their horns, which fetch huge prices in some Asian countries.
VATICAN
Pope celebrates mass
Pope Francis celebrated his first Palm Sunday Mass in St Peter’s Square yesterday, encouraging people to be humble and young at heart, as tens of thousands joyfully waved olive branches and palm fronds. The square overflowed with about 250,000 pilgrims, tourists and Romans eager to join the new pope at the start of solemn Holy Week ceremonies, which lead up to Easter. Keeping with his spontaneous style, the first pope from Latin America broke away several times from the text of his prepared homily to encourage the faithful to lead simple lives. Palm Sunday recalls Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, but its Gospel also recounts how he was betrayed by one of his apostles and ultimately sentenced to death on a cross. Recalling the triumphant welcome into Jerusalem, Francis said Jesus “awakened so many hopes in the heart, above all among humble, simple, poor, forgotten people, those who don’t matter in the eyes of the world.”
ISRAEL
Machinegun destroyed
The government said its troops fired into Syria yesterday and destroyed a machinegun position in the Golan Heights from where shots had been fired at its soldiers in a further spillover of the Syrian civil war along a tense front. It was not immediately clear whether the government held Syrian troops or rebels responsible for what a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said had been a deliberate attack on military patrols in the occupied territory. Soldiers “destroyed a Syrian machine gun nest that fired twice in the last 24 hours on Israeli patrols operating to safeguard the border,” the spokesman, Ofir Gendelman, said on his Twitter page. Shells have fallen several times inside Israeli-controlled territory during Syria’s civil war. Some of the incidents have drawn return fire.
UNITED STATES
Two die skydiving in Florida
Two skydivers from Iceland, one an instructor and the other a student, were killed in a skydiving jump on Saturday in Florida, media reported. The two men were part of a group of 22 skydivers who jumped from a plane in Zephyrhills, about 50km northeast of Tampa, according to the Tampa Tribune newspaper. When only 20 of those who jumped returned, authorities launched a search and found the bodies of the two men a few hours later, media reports said. The two men were from Iceland, according to Skydive City, which planned the jump, the Tribune reported. Their identities were not released.
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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
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