JAPAN
Rape suspect hunted
A massive manhunt was under way yesterday with 4,000 police officers, 850 vehicles, sniffer dogs, helicopters and boats scouring the city of Kawasaki for an escaped rape suspect, reports said. Yuta Sugimoto, 20, was meeting his lawyer on Tuesday at the prosecutors’ office over claims he was part of a gang that raped and robbed a woman on Thursday last week. He apparently loosened his waist rope after requesting a toilet break, a Kanagawa prefectural police official said on condition of anonymity due to departmental rules. The suspect tore himself away from police officers and escaped.
NORTH KOREA
Election date set
The presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly has decided the parliamentary election — held every five years — will take place on March 9, the official KCNA news agency said yesterday. The last parliamentary vote — a highly staged process with only one approved candidate standing for each of the 687 districts — was held in 2009. The announcement of the vote coincided with Kim’s birthday yesterday. His age is a matter of speculation due to confusion about the year of his birth. The rubber-stamp parliament is usually called into session twice a year for a day or two to pass government budgets and approve personnel changes.
INDIA
Train fire kills nine
A fire on an overnight train killed at least nine people yesterday with sleeping victims overcome by flames and smoke as the blaze ripped through three carriages, Western Railway spokesman Sharat Chandrayan said. The blaze broke out about 2:30am, shortly after the train left Mumbai for the northern city of Dehradun, he said. Many passengers managed to escape from the blazing and smoke-filled coaches by breaking open the back doors, a survivor, Mehul, told news channel CNN-IBN, but he said others died of suffocation.
SOUTH KOREA
Pop star mourns family
The leader of popular boy band Super Junior yesterday bid farewell to his father and grandparents, who died in a suspected murder-suicide on Monday. TV footage showed LeeTeuk, dressed in a black suit and tie, crying when other Super Junior members moved a coffin to a black limousine at a Seoul hospital before leaving for a crematorium. Media reports say LeeTeuk’s grandparents were found dead in bed while his father was hanging by a robe around his neck at their home. Media reports cited police officers as saying the father left a suicide note suggesting he committed suicide after strangling his parents.
CHINA
Samaritan kills himself
A man who aided a senior citizen only to be accused of knocking him down has committed suicide in the face of demands for compensation, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported yesterday. Wu Weiqing, 46, from Dongyuan, Guangdong Province, was riding his motorbike on New Year’s Eve when he came across an elderly man who appeared to have been knocked over, Wu’s widow told the newspaper. Wu helped the man up and drove him to a clinic, where he paid 3,500 yuan (US$580) in fees for him, she said. Daughter Wu Haiyan told the Guangzhou Daily that two days later her father told relatives that the old man’s family was demanding a huge sum for “medical fees … he thought it better to die to prove his innocence rather than drag his family down.” The elderly man’s family denied they had requested huge sums.
UNITED KINGDOM
Helicopter crash kills four
A US military helicopter crashed while executing a low-level training exercise on Tuesday, killing all four crew members, British military officials announced. “A US Air Force HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopter crashed at about 6:00pm today [Tuesday] near Salthouse on the Norfolk coast,” said a statement issued by the Royal Air Force’s (RAF) 48th Fighter Wing, which is based at the nearby RAF Station Lakenheath. Officials said that the aircraft, a highly modified version of the US Army’s Black Hawk helicopter, may have been carrying live ammunition.
CHILE
Upside-down bridge ridiculed
It was meant to be the nation’s first drawbridge, but the structure in Valdivia was built with at least one traffic deck upside down, delaying the bridge’s opening, officials said on Tuesday. The US$30 million project was supposed to open this month and become an instant landmark connecting Valdivia with Teja Island by bridging the Cau Cau River. Instead, it has ended up as a laughingstock on social media sites after inspectors found that one or two of the traffic decks were installed backward, authorities said. “The only responsible party is the builder. We are going to make them answer for this,” Minister of Public Works Loreto Silva said.
AUSTRIA
Radioactive diapers found
Hazmat specialists called in after Geiger counters on Tuesday showed alarmingly high radiation emanating from a dump truck arriving at an incinerator in Linz have found the problem — radioactive adult diapers. After unloading the truck, firefighters from the city’s hazardous materials unit found nearly two dozen diapers from a hospital that was contaminated with radioactive iodine, which is swallowed during some medical procedures. Unit leader Dieter Jonas said that no one was in danger because of the incident.
GERMANY
Cocaine seized by ‘chance’
Berlin police say they have seized a large haul of cocaine after smugglers apparently made a mistake that sent the drug to supermarkets on Monday. Workers at five stores in and around the city were surprised to find a total of 140kg of cocaine packed into crates of bananas. The head of Berlin’s anti-drugs squad on Tuesday said that the crates had come from Colombia via Hamburg and the discovery was “pure chance.” It is estimated that the drugs have a street value of about 6 million euros (US$8.2 million).
UNITED STATES
N Korean rap video released
What is likely the first rap video ever made in North Korea went online on Tuesday to the delight of the Washington hiphop duo who created it. Anthony Bobb (Pacman) and Dontray Ennis (Peso) posted Escape to North Korea on YouTube on the eve of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s 31st birthday. The duo traveled to North Korea in November last year to shoot their video in Pyongyang with financial help from Kickstarter contributors and a New York hedge fund manager.
CANADA
Oil, propane train derailed
A freight train carrying crude oil and propane derailed and caught fire in a sparsely populated region of New Brunswick on Tuesday, leading to the evacuation of about two dozen homes, authorities said. Sharon DeWitt, emergency measures coordinator for the nearby community of Plaster Rock, said it was unclear how big the fire was or whether anyone was hurt.
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
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