AUSTRALIA
‘Extreme fire’ warning given
Victoria State authorities yesterday warned about extreme fire weather, perhaps some of the worst since a 2009 inferno that killed 173 people. “These next four days promise to be amongst the most significant that we have faced in Victoria since Black Saturday,” acting state Premier Peter Ryan said. Tens of thousands of firefighters are on standby, and 1,290 brigades are in a “state of high preparedness,” he added, with the peak danger day expected on Friday. Forecasters say Victoria and South Australia state are likely to see “severe to extreme heat wave conditions” this week.
PHILIPPINES
Flooding kills 22
Twenty-two people have been killed and nearly 200,000 evacuated as floods and landslides hit the eastern section of Mindanao Island that is still recovering from Typhoon Bopha in December 2012, officials said yesterday. Torrential rain struck the area in the past weekend weekend. “Major rivers overflowed, causing people to drown in areas still recovering” from the typhoon, civil defense operations officer Franz Irag said. “Many of the victims had not managed to rebuild and were staying in temporary shelters when they were hit by fresh flooding.”
PHILIPPINES
Marcos jewelry ‘ill-gotten’
A jewelry collection owned by former first lady Imelda Marcos was “ill-gotten,” the anti-graft Sandiganbayan court ruled on Monday, potentially paving the way for an auction of millions of US dollars worth of seized treasures. The court decided that the Malacanang Collection, the smallest of three confiscated from the Marcos estate and worth about US$150,000, was rightfully owned by the government. The other two collections are already in government hands, but the ruling is significant because previous attempts to auction off the entire haul have been derailed by legal issues relating to the Malacanang pieces. An assessment made by Christie’s in 1991 put the value of three collections at up to US$8.5 million, though it is likely to be substantially higher now.
NEW ZEALAND
Dotcom organizing party
Indicted Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom says he is launching a political party to contest the general election this year. In an interview yesterday with The Associated Press, Dotcom said he is founding and funding the party, but will not be a candidate. Born Kim Schmitz in Germany, the 39-year-old is a resident, but not a citizen and cannot be a candidate by law. Dotcom says he will launch the party on Monday, the second anniversary of police storming his mansion and arresting him. Authorities also shut down Megaupload, the popular file-sharing site he founded.
UNITED KINGDOM
Endangered plant stolen
A minuscule, nearly extinct water lily has been stolen from London’s Royal Botanic Gardens, officials said on Monday. The Metropolitan Police said the flower theft took place sometime on Thursday last week when a Nymphaea thermarum was pulled from a shallow pond in a glasshouse at the garden in Kew. Botanic Gardens horticulture director Richard Barley said the incident was a “blow to morale.” The lily — so rare that it does not have a common name — was discovered growing in southwest Rwanda by a German botanist in the 1980s. When the mud around the Rwandan spring where it was found dried up in 2008, the plant disappeared from the wild.
RUSSIA
Journalist denied visa
A US journalist and author critical of President Vladimir Putin says he has been barred from the country. David Satter, a former Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times, who had been working in Moscow since September, said on Twitter that he had been refused permission to return after a trip to Ukraine last month. Asked on Twitter about his treatment, Satter wrote: “Yes expelled. I was living in Moscow.” The Foreign Ministry did not immediately comment on the report.
RUSSIA
Kalashnikov writes of pain
A Russian newspaper, Izvestia, on Monday published the letter, in which Mikhail Kalashnikov, the designer of the AK-47 assault rifle, asked the head of the Russian Orthodox Church if he was to blame for the deaths of those killed by his weapon. Kalashnikov, who died last month at 94, told Patriarch Kirill that he kept asking himself if he was responsible. “The pain in my soul is unbearable. I keep asking myself the same unsolvable question: If my assault rifle took people’s lives, it means that I ... am responsible for people’s deaths,’’ he said in the letter. Kalashnikov’s daughter, Elena, was quoted by Izvestia as saying that a local priest could have helped her father write the two-page letter, which was typed and carried his signature. The letter contrasted sharply with past statements by Kalashnikov, who said that he created the weapon to protect his country and could not be blamed for other people’s actions.
UNITED STATES
‘Octomom’ charged
Nadya Suleman, the California single mother of 14 children, including octuplets, who has been popularly dubbed “Octomom,” has been charged with welfare fraud, prosecutors said on Monday. The 38-year-old mother, who became a media sensation five years ago after giving birth to octuplets conceived through in vitro fertilization, is accused of failing to report nearly US$30,000 in earnings from personal appearances and residuals from videos, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office said. Suleman, whose legal name is Natalie Denise Suleman, was charged on Jan. 6 with a single count of aid by misrepresentation and two counts of perjury. Suleman faces up to five years and eight months in prison if convicted.
UNITED STATES
Marcos’ secretary sentenced
A judge sentenced a former personal secretary to Imelda Marcos on Monday to two to six years in prison for conspiring to sell Impressionist masterpieces belonging to the Manila government that vanished when former Phillipine president Ferdinand Marcos was ousted. Justice Renee White of the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan said Vilma Bautista, 75, could remain free on US$175,000 bail while her lawyers appeal, the New York Times reported. Bautista’s lawyer, Fran Hoffinger, said the court should impose no jail sentence because of her frail health.
BRAZIL
Police investigate shootings
At least 12 young men were gunned down in separate incidents within hours of one another on the outskirts of a university town, and investigators said on Monday they were looking into whether police officers carried out the killings as revenge for the shooting death of a colleague in the same area. “We’re not ruling out executions, revenge nor a fight between criminals,’’ police investigator Licurgo Nunes Costa told the newspaper Estado de S. Paulo.
‘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
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