DR CONGO
Arms depot blast kills dozens
An explosion at an arms depot claimed more than 20 lives, the UN peacekeeping mission in the country (MONUSCO) said on Saturday. The city of Mbuji-Mayi “was ravaged with more than 20 dead, around 50 wounded and many destroyed houses” on Friday, MONUSCO said in a statement. A government spokesman gave an initial death toll of at least five from the blast triggered by a lightning strike on the military munitions dump at the Brigade Army Base. Government spokesman Lambert Mende on Friday told reporters that lightning had ignited a fire in the munitions dump and set off the explosion. A witness speaking by telephone said he had seen the bodies of a woman and her child in the local hospital, as well as several people with amputated limbs. On Saturday, witnesses said the explosion had burned or destroyed houses within a radius of dozens of meters, leaving a crater about 1.5m deep.
CAMBODIA
Nine dead in wedding attack
A grenade was lobbed at a wedding party in Kampong Thom Province on Saturday, killing nine people and wounding 30 others, including the bride and groom, officials said yesterday. The attack is thought to have been carried out by a man who is in love with the bride. The grenade was thrown as guests danced, provincial military police chief Horng Thul told reporters by telephone. “They were happily dancing when the grenade exploded,” he said, adding that two girls, aged seven and 14, were among the victims. He said the bride suffered a broken thigh after she was hit by shrapnel, while the groom suffered a hand injury.
CHINA
Blaze razes ancient village
A fire has destroyed more than 100 homes in a village built three centuries ago, state media said yesterday, the third blaze to ravage a cultural site in weeks. The blazes, which all erupted in the southwest of the country, often burned down old wooden structures. The latest fire broke out at Baojing Dong Village in Guizhou Province late on Saturday and took more than four hours to put out, Xinhua news agency said. The area was “one of China’s most complete” settlements of the Dong ethnic minority, known for its “well-preserved” dwellings, it added. Nearly 2,000 people live there, but no casualties have yet been reported. The cause of the blaze remains under investigation, Xinhua said. There are more than 200 similar settlements are in the same prefecture, Qiandongnan, and many have suffered from fires, local housing official Gu Huaxian was quoted by Xinhua as saying last month.
AFGHANISTAN
Taliban bomb military bus
A Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up near a military bus in Kabul yesterday, killing four people in the latest attack in the capital. Two military officers and two civilians died when the bomber, who was on foot, targeted the bus taking Ministry of Defense staff to work. “There are four dead. Two civilians, one of them female and two military officers. It was a suicide bombing,” ministry spokesman General Zahir Azimi said. At least 22 people were injured, including two civilians, he added. A Taliban spokesman using a recognized Twitter account claimed responsibility for the blast shortly after 7am. The militants claimed that 27 soldiers were killed or wounded, although they regularly exaggerate death tolls. The attack followed an improvised explosive device blast on Saturday in which two people were wounded.
ITALY
Pig’s head sent to synagogue
Offences against Jewish targets in Rome, including a pig’s head sent to the city’s main synagogue, caused outrage on Saturday in the run-up to International Holocaust Remembrance Day today. “This is a vile and cowardly act which offends the Jewish community and all Romans on the eve of the memorial day,” Nicola Zingaretti, president of Lazio, the region in which Rome is located. The pig’s head was sent in a parcel to Rome’s Grand Synagogue on Friday and similar packages were also addressed to the Israeli embassy in Rome and to a museum holding an exhibition on the Nazi Holocaust. Officials said that anti-Semitic graffiti were also scrawled on the walls of a municipal building in the city. There was no immediate word on who was behind the acts, but police were investigating.
CUBA
Dissident arrested
Leading dissident Jose Daniel Ferrer has been arrested after meeting with European diplomats in Havana, activists said on Saturday. Elizardo Sanchez, founder and leader of the illegal but tolerated Cuban Human Rights and National Reconciliation Commission, said Ferrer was arrested late on Friday and that it was unclear where he had been taken. Ferrer lives in Santiago de Cuba, where he leads the Patriotic Cuban Union dissident group. “He was detained late Friday near my home, where he had been a guest,” Sanchez said. “We have no idea where he is,” he said, blasting his friend’s detention as “arbitrary.” Opposition leaders had expressed fear that the government would carry out “preventive detentions” ahead of this week’s meetings of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.
UNITED STATES
Execution method disputed
The prolonged execution of an inmate in Ohio during which he repeatedly gasped and snorted amounted to cruel and unusual punishment which should not be allowed to happen again, the inmate’s family said in a federal lawsuit. The lawsuit, filed late on Friday, also alleges that Lake Forest, Illinois-based Hospira, the manufacturer of the medications used in the lethal injection illegally allowed them to be used for an execution and should be prohibited from making them available for capital punishment. Dennis McGuire “repeated cycles of snorting, gurgling and arching his back, appearing to writhe in pain,” the lawsuit said. McGuire’s execution on Jan. 16 lasted 26 minutes, the longest since the state resumed putting inmates to death in 1999, according to an Associated Press analysis of all 53 execution logs maintained by the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
UNITED KINGDOM
Aiding rebels an offence
Britons traveling to Syria to help rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could be arrested on their return, a senior police chief warned on Saturday. Peter Fahy, head of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said there was “huge concern” about Britons, including a rising number of youngsters, fighting in Syria and becoming radicalized by hardline Islamists. Police have already arrested 16 people on suspicion of terrorism offences in Syria this year, some as young as 17, compared to 24 arrests in all of last year. Most of the Britons involved in attacks in the UK, including the four suicide bombers who committed the 2005 London bombings that killed 52 people, as well as their co-conspirators, were reported to have received training in camps in countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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