NEPAL
Rival parties vie for lead
Two traditional rival parties are vying for the lead in the constituent assembly election, according to partial results announced yesterday. The results showed the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist) leading with 41 seats, followed by the Nepali Congress with 32. However, a trailing Maoist party, with eight seats, has refused appeals to reverse its decision to boycott the vote counting. Party leaders have demanded that the counting be stopped and an independent probe launched because of alleged irregularities. “We have formally filed our complaint with the Election Commission,” United Communist Party of Nepal Maoists spokesman Agni Sapkota said. The Maoist party says that ballot boxes went missing for hours, were switched or disappeared while being transported to counting centers. Independent election observers, including former US president Jimmy Carter, said the elections were fair, honest and free of any irregularities. Final results from Tuesday’s vote to elect 601 assembly members are not expected until late next week, as ballot boxes were still being transported by helicopters and even on foot by porters to counting centers in the mountainous country.
JAPAN
Cocaine found on beach
Four backpacks stuffed with cocaine worth ¥4.8 billion (US$48 million) were found on a beach — the biggest amount ever discovered in the country, local media reported. The backpacks, containing 80kg of the drug wrapped in waterproof tape, were found by local residents in Yokosuka on Tuesday, the Asahi newspaper reported, citing local police. The find is the biggest by value in Japan, public broadcaster NHK said. Yokosuka, home to a US Navy base, is about 50km south of Tokyo.
CHINA
Oil pipe blast kills several
Local authorities say an oil pipe explosion in an eastern city has killed six people and severely injured seven others. The district government of Huangdao in the seaside port of Qingdao said an oil pipe near a shopping mall broke yesterday morning and that the rupture caught fire during repairs. It says the incident remains under investigation. Authorities assured the public that the blast was well away from any petrochemical plants of military facilities. The pipeline is owned by China’s largest oil refiner, Sinopec.
SOUTH AFRICA
Workers die by lightning
Eight construction workers were killed when lightning struck their tent northeast of Johannesburg, police said yesterday. “There were 14 people in a tent when the lighting struck. Eight of them died and six were hospitalized,” Mpumalanga Province police spokesman Leonard Hlathi said. The lightning storm struck the tent in Emalahleni on Wednesday evening and the dead included migrant workers from Mozambique and Lesotho, he added.
UNITED STATES
Jumbo at wrong airport
A Boeing 747 Dreamlifter made a risky takeoff without incident on Thursday from a small Kansas airport after accidentally landing there the night before. The giant cargo plane, one of just four in the world, was on its way from New York’s Kennedy International Airport to McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita, Kansas, when it landed by mistake on Wednesday night at nearby Colonel James Jabara Airport. The pilot was surprised when an air traffic controller told him he had just landed at Jabara, not McConnell. The small general aviation airport, with its 1859m runway, is not designed to handle jumbo jets.
UNITED STATES
Man lived with corpse
A man who police say lived for several months in a Detroit-area trailer home with a woman’s corpse has been sentenced to probation in the case. Dennis McCauley was arrested in spring last year after a court officer serving an eviction notice at the home in Redford Township stumbled upon the body of 72-year-old Ann Marquis sitting on a sofa. Autopsy results indicate she died of natural causes. McCauley faced a number of charges, including mutilation of a corpse, larceny, uttering and publishing, identity theft and concealing a person’s death. The 64-year-old pleaded no contest last month to uttering and publishing, and mutilation of a corpse. The other charges were dismissed, and McCauley was spared jail time in favor of a punishment consisting of probation and community service.
VENEZUELA
Business profits tightened
President Nicolas Maduro exercised new emergency powers for the first time on Thursday, signing decrees limiting business profit margins and tightening regulation of imports. He acted as part of a so-called “economic war” against a crisis for which he blames the opposition “bourgeoisie” and imperialism. Under new powers granted to Maduro on Tuesday, the two new laws aim to control prices and profits in the business sector and closely monitor imports and exports, and hard currency that comes in from oil sales, the country’s main source of revenue. Maduro’s government says the business sector has been chalking up profit margins of up to 1,000 percent on imported goods. The center-right opposition has called a rally for today to protest the emergency powers granted to Maduro, the handpicked successor of the late populist president Hugo Chavez. The opposition says the new powers are a tool granted to the government for electoral gain ahead of municipal elections on Dec. 8.
FRANCE
Farmers end blockade
Irate farmers ended a Paris road blockade that left one dead on Thursday with the promise of a ministerial meeting over a disputed subsidy, but with no guarantee of a change in policy. Agriculture Minister Stephane Le Foll announced high-level talks with grain farmers, who have called for his resignation after grants previously earmarked for them were given to livestock farmers instead. Many of the protesters held up placards calling for Le Foll’s resignation while others read: “We are being mowed down like wheat.” The minister had insisted earlier there was no question of going back on the reallocation of subsidies. Transport Minister Frederic Cuvillier had called for the “immediate lifting” of the blockade, which was blamed for a crash that killed a car driver, and organizers of the protests followed suit, ordering farmers to free up the roads.
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