INDIA
Train collision kills 40
An express train slammed into a parked freight train yesterday, killing at least 40 people officials said. The Gorakhpur Express train was traveling at high speed and slammed on its brakes in an attempt to stop, but plowed into a train sitting on the tracks near a railway station in Uttar Pradesh state, district magistrate Bharat Lal said. Six of the cars on the express train derailed. At least 150 people were injured, including the express train’s driver and assistant driver, who were in critical condition, railway official Alok Kumar said. Authorities are looking for the station master, who disappeared after the accident.
JAPAN
Corpse mailed, marked ‘doll’
Detectives were yesterday investigating the case of a young nurse whose corpse was sent by parcel post across the country in a box that claimed to contain a doll. The body of Rika Okada was found in a storage lock-up in Tokyo. Investigators also found the 2m box in which it had been transported from Osaka, reports said. The delivery service that ferried the package — marked with the Japanese word for ‘doll’ — 400km to the capital had been paid in Okada’s own name. The bill for the lock-up’s short term rental had been settled using her credit card. The body of the 29-year-old, who had been missing since late March, had more than a dozen stab wounds, local media reported, but no defensive injuries on her hands or arms. Police in Osaka refused to confirm details, but reports said a woman who had been at elementary school with Okada had flown out of Tokyo earlier this month using the dead woman’s passport. The schoolmate, who was not named, is believed to have lived just a few hundred meters from the lock-up with a Chinese woman of about the same age. Both women flew from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport on the same flight, bound for Shanghai. Just before she went missing, Okada wrote on her Facebook page that she was going to meet up with an old friend whom she had not seen for a decade.
CHINA
Xinjiang police arrest 200
So far this month, police in Xinjiang have broken up 23 terror and religious extremism groups and caught more than 200 suspects, state media reported yesterday. The raids took place in the cities of Hotan, Kashgar and Aksu. Xinhua news agency said that police had caught an unspecified number of suspects in their 20s and 30s since Friday who had learned how to make explosives and given themselves physical training through watching videos on the Internet.
AUSTRALIA
Salvation Army man led riot
An investigation of a violent riot in an immigration detention camp on Papua New Guinea has found a local Salvation Army officer led a brutal attack that felt an Iranian man dead. Papua New Guinea police are investigating the violence at the Australia-run camp on remote Manus Island on Feb. 18 that left 23-year-old asylum seeker Reza Barati with fatal head injuries. More than 60 asylum seekers were injured during three days of violence.
SOUTH AFRICA
Black finance minister named
President Jacob Zuma on Sunday tapped Deputy Minister of Finance Nhlanhla Nene to become the country’s first black finance minister as he unveiled his new Cabinet a day after taking office. The appointment of Nene, aged 55, represents a statement of intent from Zuma, who has vowed to bring radical social and economic transformation in his second five-year term.
UNITED STATES
Cabbie shot over route
A 16-year-old boy charged with fatally shooting a Pennsylvania cab driver who did not take his preferred route was interviewed as a witness to a triple homicide in New Jersey last year, police said. Aazis Richardson was charged with murder on Friday night, hours after 47-year-old cab driver Vincent Darbenzio was found shot twice in the head in Scranton. Police said Richardson had complained that the driver was “taking the long way and ripping him off.” When Richardson was arraigned on Friday night, reporters asked him why he shot the cab driver. He responded: “That’s what I do to people who don’t listen,” TV station WNEP reported.
GERMANY
Tempelhof plan rejected
Voters in the capital on Sunday rejected plans for a large-scale property development on their former Tempelhof Airport, which has in recent ears become a popular inner-city park. Berlin residents voted in a referendum aimed at preserving the green space, which is about the size of New York’s Central Park. According to early results, almost 65 percent voted against the development plans proposed by the city-state of Berlin, the local statistics office said. The city had proposed building some 4,700 apartments, homes and commercial spaces, as well as a large public library, sports fields and a lake, that would cover about 20 percent of the field.
YEMEN
Top militant killed
The government said on Sunday that it killed one of the country’s most wanted al-Qaeda militants, hours after military officials said anti-terrorism units supported by army troops and US drones launched an attack against hideouts of the group in the mountainous Arhab region, north of Sana’a, leaving five militants and six soldiers killed. Saleh al-Tays’ name is on the list of the country’s list of 25 most-wanted terrorists issued last year. He had been suspected to have been killed before in targeted attacks, including in US drone strikes last year, in 2008 and 2009. The statement said al-Tays was involved in the assassination of a politician earlier this year, and in killing foreign diplomats and civilians.
UNITED STATES
Graduate, 99, ‘feels great’
A 99-year-old Maine woman has graduated from college 75 years after a US$5 fee kept her from getting her diploma on time. Beal College in Bangor awarded Jessie White her degree during a special ceremony on Friday hosted by Alan Stehle, the college’s president. White told ABC News that the special ceremony was wonderful and a lot of fun. White was supposed to graduate in 1939, but could not afford the US$5 transcript fee. A friend who recently learned of her decades-old predicament called Stehle, who paid her balance and set up the ceremony. White, a Maine native, received her degree in stenography and bookkeeping. White said finally getting her degree made her feel “great. Never give up learning. They say when you give up learning you grow old,” she said, according to ABC News.
MEXICO
Drug baron caught
Authorities said on Sunday they had captured one of the top leaders of the Gulf drug cartel who was responsible for a recent wave of shoot outs and massacres in Tamaulipas State. Juan Rodriguez Garcia was arrested in a wealthy suburb of the city of Monterrey, National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in 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
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