INDONESIA
Woman’s body found
Rescuers recovered the body believed to be of a Japanese diver and searched for six others missing yesterday off the island of Bali, police said. The group, including two instructors, left on Friday morning on a boat they hired for a dive around mangroves in Crystal Bay when strong winds and heavy rains hit the area, Nusa Penida police chief Major Nyoman Suarsika said. Rescuers yesterday found the body of a woman, Bali police spokesman Colonel Hariadi said. A list provided by police shows the group included one man and six women. The search for the missing involved police, the National Search and Rescue Agency and fishermen, guided by the two Indonesian skippers from the divers’ boat. Nusa Penida is about 20km east off Bali capital Denpasar.
PHILIPPINES
Haiyan survivors supported
Tens of thousands of members of a sect took to the streets in Manila yesterday in a charity walk to raise funds for survivors of the country’s deadliest typhoon. Members of the Iglesia ni Cristo (Church of Christ) poured into the capital’s seaside avenue in response to the politically influential sect’s appeal to help compatriots caught up by Super Typhoon Haiyan’s onslaught. All those taking part bought special white T shirts, costing 250 pesos (US$5.59) to wear during the march, with all proceed from sales of the garment being donated to help those in need. Police estimated the crowd at about 200,000. Haiyan tore across 171 towns and cities on Nov. 8 last year, killing at least 6,200 people and leaving about 2,000 missing, according to an official count.
CHINA
Wedding hall kills 10
A wedding hall in the east of the country collapsed, killing 10 people among more than 200 attending a banquet, state media reported on Friday. There was no immediate word on the cause of Thursday’s collapse in Yazhuang in Zhejiang Province, but Xinhua said the structure was old and the roof was straining under the weight of a recent heavy snowfall. Xinhua news agency cited officials as saying 91 people were hospitalized with injuries, including 11 in a critical condition. “Just a few minutes after I sat down to dine, I heard creaking wood. Then the roof fell in the minute I looked up,’’ Xinhua quoted one of the injured, Chen Dianzhong, as saying. More than 100 rescue workers, aided by local villagers, pulled dead and injured from the rubble, Xinhua said.
JAPAN
Snow kills three more
Road, rail and air travel services faced further disruptions yesterday, reports and officials said, after a fresh snow storm killed three people and injured 850 following last week’s deadly blizzard. Snow began falling on Friday morning in the capital Tokyo and piled up to 26cm by early yesterday. A driver was killed on Friday in a crash involving his car and a truck on an icy road in central Shiga, while a farmer died after a tractor overturned on a snow-covered road in southwestern Oita, media said. NHK said about 850 people, including one in a coma, have been injured in snow-related accidents across the nation since snow hit the country’s west late on Thursday. At least 628 flights, mostly on domestic routes, were canceled yesterday at Haneda airport in Tokyo and other airports in the east, NHK said, a day after more than 260 flights were grounded due to heavy snow. Two commuter trains collided at Motosumiyoshi station in Tokyo early yesterday, leaving 19 passengers injured, officials said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Anti-EU party gains support
Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative party was pushed into third place behind the anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP) in a single parliamentary seat vote won by the opposition Labour Party. The result underlined the threat that UKIP, which wants Britain to leave the EU and an end to “open-door immigration,” poses to the Conservatives and other parties ahead of a national election next year. Thursday’s vote for a seat in northern England, one of 650 in parliament’s lower house, was the first electoral test this year ahead of European Parliament elections in May and next year’s general election. Opinion polls have shown that UKIP is on course to beat the Conservative Party in the European elections too, and to split the center-right vote next year. The Wythenshawe and Sale East seat on the outskirts of Manchester is regarded as a safe seat for the opposition Labour Party.
GERMANY
Pyramid theft investigated
Prosecutors say they are investigating two self-styled researchers who have admitted chipping off a piece from a pyramid’s burial chamber in their attempt to prove a theory that the structure was built by people pre-dating the ancient Egyptians. Chemniz prosecutor Ingrid Burghart said on Friday that Dominique Goerlitz and Stefan Erdmann are under investigation on suspicion of theft. Egyptian authorities on Thursday said six Egyptians were already in custody on charges of being accessories to the German men on their expedition in April last year. Egyptian prosecutor Hisham Barakat said the men entered the famed Giza pyramids with permits to visit, but not excavate, and left with samples of stone from the ramparts of two tombs and the burial room of King Khufu. The Germans apologized in December last year, saying their purpose was purely scientific.
FRANCE
Wine theft suspects charged
Prosecutors on Friday charged 13 people suspected of involvement in stealing close to 1 million euros (US$1.37 million) worth of top Bordeaux wines. More than 300 officers swooped on what they described as a “very structured, professional” operation on Monday, making 20 arrests. A total of 13 chateaux and two warehouses which stocked wines from several properties were targeted for robberies which have been carried out, on average, once every two weeks since June last year. The thieves’ modus operandi was always the same: They used stolen vehicles and sprayed bleach where they had been to ensure they left no traces. Prices of the very top Bordeaux wines from good recent vintages can easily exceed 1,000 euros a bottle, while older and rarer bottles can be worth many times that amount.
FRANCE
Body found near crash site
A body was discovered on Friday on the banks of the river into which a Chinese tycoon crashed his helicopter as he toured his newly acquired Bordeaux wine estate in December last year. A resident of nearby Saint-Andre de Cubzac found the body, sources in the investigation said on condition of anonymity, but the body was not yet confirmed as that of Lam Kok (郝琳). “The site of the discovery is located between the site of the crash and the place where the bodies of two other passengers were found,” an official said. “But we have to wait for DNA matches as part of the forensic investigation,” the official added.
CANADA
Spy love affair investigated
Authorities are investigating one of its anti-terrorism agents for having a year-long affair with her target, an alleged Iranian spy, an official said on Friday. The Montreal French-language daily La Presse said a seemingly innocent text sent from a cellphone in the Ottawa region triggered the probe. “Hey darling, I have a little something special I want to give you for Christmas. ;) I hope that you have a great Christmas. Let’s talk soon, okay? I love you and I miss you. xxo,” it reportedly said. The Passport Canada employee assigned to an Integrated National Security Enforcement Team was tasked with following the movements of the suspect, an Iranian-born Canadian living in Montreal. According to La Presse, she herself became the target of an internal investigation after her affair was revealed recently. She was also suspended. Officials said they want to ensure that no sensitive information was leaked.
UNITED STATES
Plane crash owners sued
The husband of Jenni Rivera is suing the owners of the plane that crashed in northern Mexico in December 2012, killing the Mexican-American pop star and six others. City News Service says former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Esteban Loaiza filed the wrongful death case on Friday in Los Angeles. Among other things, the lawsuit claims that the pilots were not licensed to fly paying passengers. Rivera sold more than 15 million records. The 43-year-old superstar filed for divorce from Loaiza two months before the crash, but the lawsuit says he continued to receive financial benefits from her.
COLOMBIA
Earth wall collapse kills five
A wall of rain-sodden earth collapsed into an illegal, open-air gold mining pit on Friday, killing five miners and injuring 12, authorities said. Red Cross spokesman Cesur Uruena in Bogota said heavy rains were impeding attempts to land helicopters in the municipality of Santa Barbara de Iscuande in Narino state to evacuate the injured. He put the death toll at five. “This is completely illegal mining,” the Narino security chief Jaime Rodriguez said, adding that Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guerrillas were active in the area.
BRAZIL
Boy survives impalement
A 10-year-old boy has survived after falling from a tree and landing on a 60cm long iron bar that entered his left armpit and exited near his right ear. Doctors told Globo TV on Friday that it is a miracle that Weverton Silva did not die. The rebar that pierced him during last week’s accident in Rio de Janeiro state barely missed an artery and his heart. The boy was on a branch of a guava tree when it broke and he fell on a wall the bar was jutting from. Firefighters took Weverton to the hospital, where Dr Rodrigo Chicralla tells Globo it took five hours to remove the bar in one piece from the boy’s body. Doctors sent the child home on Friday.
CHILE
Actors shoot miner film
French actress Juliette Binoche and Spanish actor Antonio Banderas are on location in an isolated part of the world’s driest desert shooting a Hollywood film about the 2010 rescue of 33 miners. Binoche and Banderas star in The 33, a drama about the miners trapped deep below the Atacama desert for 69 days and the rescue that mesmerized millions of people around the globe. The movie is expected to be released next year.
‘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
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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in