CHINA
Heatwave kills at least 10
At least 10 people have died in Shanghai of heatstroke as of Friday last week, Shanghai Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention spokesman Leng Guangming, said, as the city grapples with its highest temperatures in at least 140 years. Much of the nation is in the grip of a summer heatwave, and the China Meteorological Association issued a high temperature warning for several eastern and central provinces, saying temperatures could reach 41°C yesterday. The temperature reached 40.6°C on Friday last week, topping a previous high of 40.2°C in 1934 and the highest since records began in 1873, Xinhua news agency said earlier.
CHINA
Cadmium poisoning kills 26
At least 26 villagers have died from cadmium poisoning and hundreds more have fallen ill since 2009 near a disused factory in Hunan Province, local media said yesterday. Soil samples from Shuangqiao contained 300 times authorized cadmium levels and excess amounts were found in 500 of 3,000 villagers tested by health authorities, the China Youth Daily said. It said 26 people had died as a result of cadmium exposure in the past four years, eight of them under 60, and 20 of them from cancer, while children in the village were born with deformities. A major chemical plant operated in the village until 2009, and a “huge” industrial waste pile remains in the factory grounds, as does “an odor that will not go away,” the paper said. It described the situation as “one of the country’s 10 biggest pollution incidents.”
PHILIPPINES
Troops may stay in Golan
Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario says he has reversed an earlier recommendation to President Benigno Aquino III and now wants about 340 Filipino peacekeepers to stay in the Golan Heights for at least six months after the UN promised to bolster their safety. Del Rosario told a news conference in Manila yesterday that UN officials assured him in a recent meeting in New York that they would fulfill three conditions laid down by Manila, including providing the peacekeepers with more self-defense weapons. Del Rosario asked Aquino in May to withdraw the peacekeepers because of escalating hostilities between Syrian rebels and government troops in the UN-patrolled buffer zone.
PHILIPPINES
Debt shuts down province
An entire province has been plunged into darkness after the national power grid operator cut off supply because of accumulated debt of US$93 million. The blackout that started on Tuesday surprised residents of Albay, which has a population of 1.2 million. Health insurance company employee Cristie Recebido said the electricity operator issued no warning and that streets in the capital, Legazpi, were cloaked in darkness. Shops closed early, and hospitals and offices were running on generators. The Department of Energy says a disconnection notice had been served to the Albay Electric Cooperative because it failed to settle a debt of 4 billion pesos over 15 years.
MYANMAR
Floods force 25,000 to leave
Nearly 25,000 people have been evacuated to makeshift camps after floods ravaged the east, an official said yesterday, as relief teams struggled to reach remote areas inundated by water. Flood waters have risen dramatically after several days of heavy rain in Karen State forcing thousands to flee to nearly 80 relief camps, Chum Hre, director of the social welfare, relief and resettlement department said.
DR CONGO
UN gives rebels ultimatum
The UN on Tuesday gave M23 rebel forces 48 hours to disarm in the area around the city of Goma in the volatile east or face “the use of force.” A new UN intervention brigade will be used for the first time to help the army set up a “security zone” in the city, the international body said. A statement by the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) gave M23 rebels around Goma until 4pm today “to hand in their weapon to a MONUSCO base” and join a demobilization program.
UNITED KINGDOM
Stoppard wins Pinter prize
Oscar-winning playwright Tom Stoppard has been awarded a major freedom-of-speech prize for his determination to “tell things as they are,” writers organization PEN said in a statement yesterday. The PEN/Pinter prize was established in 2009 in memory of Nobel Prize-winning playwright Harold Pinter. It goes jointly to a British writer seen as sharing Pinter’s” unflinching unswerving” gaze on society, and a “writer of courage” who has faced persecution, chosen by the British winner and PEN. Stoppard, who scripted Oscar-winner Shakespeare in Love, is the author of plays including Arcadia and The Real Thing. The co-winner will be announced at a ceremony at the British Library on Oct. 7, when Stoppard accepts his award.
SPAIN
Train driver was on phone
The driver of the train that derailed in the northwest last week, killing 79 people, was talking on the telephone with state train operator Renfe at the time of the accident, a court said on Tuesday after analyzing the train’s data recording devices. The initial reading of the so-called black boxes said driver Francisco Garzon received a call from Renfe minutes before the accident to discuss the path to Ferrol, the final destination for the high-speed train that departed from Madrid on Wednesday last week with 218 passengers aboard. The court investigating the case said that by the conversation and background noise picked up on the black boxes, the driver appeared to be consulting a map or some kind of paper document while on the telephone with Renfe staff. The train was traveling at 192kph in the minutes before it derailed in a curve where the speed limit is 80kph.
UNITED STATES
Weiner vows not to quit
New York City mayoral hopeful Anthony Weiner has released a new campaign video saying he will not quit the race. Last week, Weiner acknowledged exchanging sexually explicit messages online after similar behavior spurred his resignation from Congress in 2011. He says in the video that when “embarrassing” things in a person’s private life become public, the person should talk about it. The one-minute video was posted on his campaign’s Web site on Tuesday evening. A poll released on Monday found Weiner’s support fell from 26 percent last week to 16 percent.
UNITED STATES
Porn spoofs discontinued
The days of pornographic videos with names based on Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavors are over. Caballero Video has agreed to stop marketing Boston Cream Thigh, Peanut Butter D-Cup and other films spoofing the names of the venerable Vermont ice cream maker’s products. The Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday that the agreement settles a lawsuit Ben & Jerry’s brought against Caballero last year. According to the suit, 10 titles in Caballero’s Ben & Cherry’s series besmirched the ice cream maker’s name and infringed its trademark.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not