AFGHANISTAN
Taliban behead 12 civilians
An official says the Taliban have beheaded 12 civilians and torched about 60 homes in an assault on security forces in the eastern Ghazni Province. Provincial deputy police chief Asadullah Ensafi said the Taliban had attacked several villages over the past week in the Arjistan District. He said that on Thursday night they captured and beheaded 12 family members of local and national police and burned down 60 homes. He added that the battle was still raging. Ensafi said the Taliban also detonated a car bomb in front of an encampment where about 40 police were posted. He said it was not possible to reach the area to ascertain casualties because the insurgents had mined the roads.
INDIA
Border dispute resolved
A military stand-off with Chinese troops that lasted nearly two weeks and overshadowed a key summit in New Delhi has ended, Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj said, after meeting her Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi (王毅). Troops were to start pulling back from the disputed border area yesterday, Swaraj said. “Timelines have been drawn... by Sept. 30, it [withdrawal] will be completed. Whichever positions were occupied by the armies on Sept. 1, they will go back to those positions,” she said in comments broadcast on TV.
INDIA
Modi faces US lawsuit
A US court has ordered Prime Minister Narendra Modi to answer allegations that he failed to stop anti-Muslim rioting when he was chief minister of Gujarat state, overshadowing his first trip to the US as his nation’s leader. The civil case before a New York court seeks compensatory and punitive damages from Modi for crimes against humanity and extrajudicial killings under the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Torture Victim Protection Act. Modi has 21 days to respond. The petitioner in the case is the American Justice Center, a non-profit human rights organization, acting on behalf of two survivors of the 2002 riots in the western Indian state. Modi was to arrive in the US for a five-day visit yesterday.
CAMBODIA
Activists pan Australia deal
About 100 people, including Buddhist monks, protested outside the Australian embassy against a deal to be signed later yesterday that will see asylum seekers rejected by Australia resettle in Cambodia. A senior Australian minister said the bilateral agreement would cost the Australian government more than A$10 million (US$9 million) a year. Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison was to sign a memorandum of understanding with Cambodian Interior Minister Sar Kheng in Phnom Penh to resettle an unspecified number of refugees currently held at an Australia-run detention camp in Nauru.
VATICAN CITY
Pope removes bishop
Pope Francis on Thursday removed a conservative bishop from a Paraguayan diocese who had clashed with his fellow bishops and promoted a priest accused of inappropriate sexual behavior. The removal of Bishop Rogelio Ricardo Livieres Plano, a member of the conservative Opus Dei movement, underscored the deep ideological shift under way in the church under Francis. The Vatican said Francis took the “onerous” decision in Paraguay for the good of the church in Ciudad del Este and for the sake of unity among Paraguayan bishops.
SPACE
Crew docks with station
A US and Russian crew docked early yesterday with the International Space Station, about six hours after launching from Russia’s manned space facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The Russian Soyuz-TMA14M spacecraft joined up with the space laboratory as it orbited 364km above the planet. It was carrying space veterans Alexander Samokutayev of Russia and US astronaut Barry Wilmore, along with Elena Servova of Russia, making her first journey. The capsule launched at 2:25am on Friday from Baikonur. Serova is the first Russian woman to fly to space since 1997, and the fourth woman in the history of the Soviet and Russian space programs. Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space in 1963.
VENEZUELA
Fingerprinting hits stores
Caracas has started to fingerprint shoppers at some state-run supermarkets in a plan to combat food scarcity that has been derided by some consumers weary of shortages. The plan designed to prevent shoppers from stocking up on cheap price-fixed goods has been implemented in some state-run supermarkets. “This guarantees price-fixed products will remain on shelves,” Minister of People’s Power for Food Yvan Bello said during a visit to a huge Bicentenario supermarket in Caracas on Thursday afternoon to drum up support for the initiative. About 785,000 people have been registered in six state-run food store chains across the nation, the Venezuelan Ministry of Communications and Information said in a statement.
RUSSIA
Stunt pans Western T-shirts
Russians are being urged by a pro-Kremlin group to trash Western T-shirts and put on new ones flaunting anti-sanction slogans such as “We can get our kicks without your Coca-Cola.” The stunt seemed to score a hit with young Muscovites, who handed in more than 3,000 old T-shirts bearing slogans such as “I love NY” on the first day, Monday, said Ksenia Melnikova, one of the organizers from fundraising group Sodeistviye (Cooperation).
UNITED STATES
Stone Age globalization?
Innovative Stone Age tools may have been developed by people in Eurasia and not just invented in Africa, a study published on Thursday found. Research published in the journal Science shows evidence that refined stone weapons were developed in Armenia about 325,000 years ago. Experts studied thousands of stone artifacts from a site in Armenia. “The discovery of thousands of stone artifacts preserved at this unique site provides a major new insight into how Stone Age tools developed during a period of profound human behavioral and biological change,” researcher Simon Blockley, from the Royal Holloway geography department of the University of London, said in a statement.
‘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
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