JAPAN
Abe to tour S America region
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will depart on a five-nation tour of Latin America and the Caribbean this month in a bid to boost ties with the region’s emerging economies, an official said yesterday. Abe is to visit Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, Chile and Brazil from July 25 to Aug. 2, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said. The trip will mark the first time a Japanese prime minister visits Trinidad and Tobago and Colombia and the first visit in at least a decade for other nations on the tour, Suga added. In Trinidad and Tobago, Abe is to attend the first summit between Japan and CARICOM (Caribbean Community), before going to Brazil to give a speech on his Latin America policy.
AFGHANISTAN
Bomb blasts kill dozens
A car packed with explosives exploded yesterday by a crowded market in Paktika Province, killing at least 30 people and wounding 40, police said. Officials said the death toll was certain to rise. Another source said up to 50 people may have been killed. Local deputy police chief Nissar Ahmad Abdulrahimzai said police had been tipped off about the car and were chasing it when it exploded. “The explosion was so big it destroyed many shops. Dozens of people are trapped under the roofs,” district governor Mohammad Raza Kharoti told reporters. “The number of wounded will rise to more than 100 and the number of those martyred will also increase.” In Kabul, a remote control bomb concealed by a roadside killed two employees of President Hamid Karzai’s media office and wounded five, police said. The Taliban claimed responsibility.
INDONESIA
Canadian accused of abuse
A Canadian teacher has been arrested in Jakarta for alleged child sex abuse, police said yesterday, in a scandal that has rocked one of the country’s most prestigious international schools. The teacher, an administrator at the Jakarta International School, could face up to 15 years in jail if found guilty, Jakarta Police spokesman Rikwanto said. “He allegedly committed the act repeatedly in several locations on the school’s premises over a period of six months,” Rikwanto told reporters. A local teacher at the school was also arrested on Monday for alleged sexual assault, Rikwanto said. The school has come under intense scrutiny since police in April arrested several outsourced cleaners over the gang rape of a six-year-old boy. The parents of one of the victims is seeking US$125 million from the school in a lawsuit, the school said in a statement. “We are distressed by this turn of events and are very frustrated that our staff members have been detained based on allegations against them that are absolutely false and are made without evidence,” the statement said.
AUSTRALIA
Fire victims awarded A$500m
Survivors of one of the nation’s deadliest wildfires won compensation of nearly A$500 million (US$470 million) on Monday, the biggest class-action settlement in the country’s history. The Kilmore East-Kinglake bushfire in February 2009 claimed 119 lives, 1,200 homes and caused an estimated A$1 billion worth of damage. It was part of a series of blazes across Victoria State, which became known as Black Saturday and killed 173 people. Under the settlement struck after a 16-month trial in the Victoria Supreme Court, energy company SP AusNet is to pay the bulk of the settlement, A$378.6 million, maintenance contractor Utility Services Corporation Ltd is to pay A$12.5 million and Victorian State parties A$103.6 million.
GAZA
EU evacuates citizens
European countries from Britain to Romania on Monday announced dozens of evacuations from Gaza amid violence in the region. Outgoing British Foreign Secretary William Hague said 27 British and their Palestinian dependents left Gaza late on Sunday through Israel to Jordan. Romania’s foreign ministry said 84 citizens living in Gaza in mixed Romanian-Palestinian families arrived at an air base north of Bucharest on Monday from Amman, Jordan. In Sweden, Foreign Minister Carl Bildt tweeted that 93 Swedish citizens had been evacuated from Gaza to Jordan. Swedish foreign ministry spokesman Erik Wirkensjo said the Swedes were among a few hundred other nationals who were evacuated from Gaza on Sunday.
UNITED NATIONS
UN okays cross-border aid
The UN Security Council adopted a resolution on Monday authorizing humanitarian convoys to Syria without the consent of the Damascus regime, to help more than 1 million civilians in rebel-held areas. The council — including Russia and China — unanimously approved the measure. The shipments will travel through four border crossings — two in Turkey (Bab a-Salam and Bab al-Hawa), one in Iraq (al-Yarubiyah) and another in Jordan (al-Ramtha). The resolution will allow immediate aid deliveries to 1.3 million civilians in rebel-held areas, British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant told the council. More than 10.8 million Syrians are in need of aid, UN officials said. Under the measure, which is valid for six months, convoys will be monitored by UN teams who will simply inform the Syrian government of the shipments, but will not seek permission for the deliveries. Syria has warned in a letter to the UN Security Council last month that it would consider any enforced cross-border delivery of humanitarian aid without its consent as an “attack” on the state.
ITALY
‘Concordia’ refloated
The shipwrecked Costa Concordia was successfully refloated on Monday in preparation to be towed away for scrapping, 30 months after it struck a reef and capsized, killing 32 people. Authorities expressed satisfaction that the operation to float the Concordia from an underwater platform had proceeded without a hitch. Technicians later shifted the massive cruise ship about 30m before ending the day’s operations. “Another day, and the worst is over,” said the head of the salvage operation, Nick Sloane. The entire operation to remove the Concordia from the reef and float it to Genoa, where it will be scrapped, will cost a total of 1.5 billion euros (US$2 billion), Costa Crociere SpA CEO Michael Tamm told reporters. Towing is set to begin on July 21.
RUSSIA
Twenty killed in derailment
Twenty people were killed and nearly 130 were injured yesterday when a train on the Moscow subway went off the rails between two stations, a Ministry of Health spokesman said. About 200 people were evacuated by rescue workers, an emergency official told Rossiya-24 television, and 20 were earlier reported trapped in one of the damaged rail cars. A spokesman for the Emergencies Ministry said a power surge caused the train to stall and several cars to derail between the Slaviansky Boulevard and Park Pobedy stations. “It braked very hard. The lights went off and there was lots of smoke,” a man, his nose bloodied, told Rossiya-24 television. “We were trapped and only got out by some miracle. I thought it was the end. Many people were hurt, mostly in the first rail car because the cars ran into each other.”
‘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