CHINA
Jilin bus fire kills 10
A fire on a crowded passenger bus in the northeastern city of Jilin yesterday killed at least 10 people and injured 17, the provincial government said on its microblog. The fire broke out early in the morning as the vehicle neared a highway entrance, it said. Reports said 43 people were aboard the bus. There was no immediate word on the cause of the fire.
INDONESIA
Arms depot blast kills one
One naval serviceman was killed and 87 people were injured yesterday when an explosion shattered a naval warehouse on a small island near Jakarta, military spokesman Iskandar Sitompul said. The blast was believed to have followed an electrical short-circuit in the building, which housed light ammunition, he said. The explosion blew apart the warehouse belonging to an elite naval combat force, spraying victims with shrapnel and pieces of wood and glass.
PAKISTAN
Lawyers threatened
Lawyers representing former president Pervez Musharraf in a treason case yesterday said they had been threatened with beheading and called for a new venue for the trial. Lawyer Ahmad Raza Kasuri said the defense team feared for its safety, after a suicide attack on a lower court complex in Islamabad on Monday left 11 dead. “We cannot go ahead with this case in these conditions,” he said, before reading aloud from a threatening letter he said the team had received. The handwritten letter said: “Dear Sirs, we request that the three of you stop representing Musharraf otherwise we will destroy your children and behead all of you... He is an infidel, hypocrite and you should stop representing him or be prepared for war.” It was signed by the “people of South and North Waziristan.”
AUSTRALIA
Extensions for Ukrainians
The government has offered temporary refuge to visiting Ukrainians due to soon return to their country. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop yesterday told parliament that Ukrainians could apply for visa extensions to stay temporarily “while their nation is under threat.” The government did not say how long visas would be extended, nor did it immediately provide figures on how many Ukrainians might be eligible to extend their stays.
AUSTRALIA
Warship rescues Iranians
A warship has rescued 13 Iranians shipwrecked off Pakistan on its way to the Middle East to join an international force conducting counter-terrorist and anti-piracy operations, officials said yesterday. HMAS Darwin came across the men, some elderly, on Saturday in calm seas after their boat was reportedly struck by an unknown vessel and sank. They claimed to have been adrift for five days. Images showed six of them crowded into a small blue dingy while three were perched on debris and the other four sitting inside large plastic containers that would have been swamped in rough conditions. It was not clear if they were taken aboard the Darwin, with defense officials saying only that the ship stayed with the fishermen until a Pakistani vessel, MSS Nusrat, arrived and took them to shore.
VATICAN CITY
Pope offended by hype
Pope Francis says he finds the hype that is increasingly surrounding him “offensive.” In an interview with Italian daily Corriere della Sera, Francis said he does not appreciate the myth-making that has seen him depicted as a “Superpope” who sneaks out at night to feed the poor.
TURKEY
President announces probe
President Abdullah Gul on Tuesday ordered a probe into wiretapping and the government’s ability to fight corruption amid a widening graft scandal that has rocked Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s administration. Gul ordered the top auditing body, the State Auditing Board, to investigate rules surrounding the wiretapping of communications to “assess their compliance with the law.” The move comes after audio tapes emerged last week of Erdogan and his son allegedly discussing how to hide large sums of money on Dec. 17. Erdogan has dismissed the recordings as a “vile montage” by his rivals and accused prosecutors and police of spying for another country.
UNITED STATES
Gas blast kills one
A gas leak and explosion in a New Jersey neighborhood killed one person and injured seven workers on Tuesday while destroying 10 homes and damaging 45 others, authorities said. The body of a woman was found on a car near the site of an explosion in a housing development. Police were waiting for the results of an autopsy for positive identification of the person, Lieutenant Ron Lunetta said. Officials did not know whether the woman lived at the development. Police said the blast happened on Tuesday after a gas line was damaged by contractors who were digging in the area. At least 10 town homes were destroyed in the Trenton suburb of Ewing and 45 others damaged.
UNITED STATES
‘Times’ prints correction
The New York Times has printed a correction for misspelling 161 years ago the name of a black man who was sold into slavery and whose memoirs were turned into the Oscar-winning movie 12 Years a Slave.” In a Jan. 20, 1853, article, the Times misspelled Solomon Northup’s surname as Northrop and as Northrup. The Times corrected Northup’s name on Tuesday, after the errors were pointed out by someone looking at its archives. The correction said the article about Northup had “misspelled his surname as Northrop. And the headline misspelled it as Northrup.”
CANADA
Payment prompts apology
Defence Minister Rob Nicholson apologized on Tuesday after the mother of a soldier who committed suicide in 2011 received a C$0.01 (US$0.01) check for “release pay” — three years after her son’s death. He blamed an “insensitive bureaucratic screw up” for the “absolutely ridiculous” decision to send the payment to the family of 22-year-old Justin Stark. “I will take steps immediately to ensure that something like this should never happen again,” Nicholson said. Stark took his own life in 2011 after returning to Canada following a seven-month deployment to Afghanistan.
UNITED KINGDOM
Parliament to be film set
Britain’s House of Commons is to open its doors to a commercial film crew for the first time next month in a bid to raise cash, welcoming Meryl Streep for a movie about the suffragettes, officials said on Tuesday. The Oscar-winning actress is to appear alongside Carey Mulligan and Helena Bonham Carter in the British film Suffragette, the fictional tale of one woman’s fight for the right to vote. Parliamentary authorities decided last year to try to boost their coffers by renting out parts of the Palace of Westminster when lawmakers are not sitting, although crews will not be allowed to film in the debating chamber.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion