CHINA
Quake kills at least four
A strong earthquake that hit a sparsely populated, mountainous area killed at least four people and injured 54, including schoolchildren in a stampede, officials said on Sunday. The US Geological Survey said the magnitude 5.9 earthquake hit on Saturday about 30km from Kangding County in Sichuan Province. China’s seismological agency put the magnitude at 6.3. The four dead included a woman in her 70s, who was struck by a falling window pane, Xinhua news agency and CCTV said. A stampede at a primary school in Tagong during the earthquake injured 42 children, Xinhua reported. Thirty homes collapsed and 2,630 suffered serious damage, the Sichuan information office said.
AUSTRALIA
Baby found in Sydney drain
Police were yesterday questioning a 20-year-old woman whose newborn baby was found abandoned in a drain near a Sydney freeway. The baby, who is only a few days old, was in a serious, but stable condition in Sydney’s Westmead Children’s Hospital, police said in a statement. A group of cyclists were riding along a bicycle lane beside the M7 motorway in the Sydney suburb of Quakers Hill when they heard a baby’s cry coming from the drain, police said. They managed to lift the heavy concrete lid off the drain, which is 2.5m deep, and saw the baby wrapped in a hospital blanket at the bottom. Police reached the scene soon after and rescued the child. The baby had no signs of physical injury, but was malnourished.
CHINA
Man arrested for spying
A man has been arrested for taking photographs of an aircraft carrier base and selling them to a foreigner as more young Chinese Internet users are being recruited by foreign spies to gather intelligence on military affairs, state media said. The man, surnamed Cao and from the eastern city of Qingdao, is awaiting trial, CCTV reported on Saturday. He had taken photographs of an aircraft carrier base in Qingdao for a man who had claimed to be the editor of a military magazine and was paid “a large sum of cash,” CCTV said. “In recent years, the number of young Internet users like Cao, who look for jobs and make friends on the Internet, who have been subverted by foreign espionage and intelligence agencies, and accepted instructions from them to collect intelligence on military targets, has been increasing,” CCTV said, citing unnamed counterintelligence officials.
MONACO
Royal couple to have twins
Prince Albert II and Princess Charlene of Monaco are expecting twins next month and the first one born will be the prince’s heir. The palace of the Riviera principality advised citizens on Saturday that the big moment would be celebrated with church bells ringing. The palace said there would be 21 cannon shots for each baby and bells tolling for 15 minutes, followed by boat horns.
SAUDI ARABIA
Danish man shot in capital
A Danish citizen was shot as he left work in his car in the capital, Riyadh, the Saudi Press Agency reported, citing a police spokesman it did not identify. The Danish national sustained an injury to his shoulder and was in stable condition in hospital, according to the news service. Police are investigating the crime, it said, without providing additional information. The shooting of the Danish man took place on the al-Kharj Road near an Ikea furniture shop, the US embassy said. The embassy has instructed its personnel to avoid the area where the attack occurred.
GREECE
Mound dig continues
Scientists have opened the second phase of their excavation of the vast fourth-century BC burial mound in the town of Amphipolis in search of more tombs and bodies. The first search of the site, which was built shortly after Alexander the Great’s death, discovered and dug up a tomb containing a skeleton. Greek Minister of Culture and Sport Costas Tasoulas visited the burial mound in northern Greece on Saturday to announce the new phase of the exploration. Geophysicists are scanning the site to see whether there are other structures besides the splendid, three-chamber tomb discovered in August. The area being scanned is about one-seventh of the total of 2 hectares that the mound covers.
GERMANY
Hitler painting auctioned
A watercolor painted by a young Adolf Hitler a century ago went under the hammer for 130,000 euros (US$161,000) on Saturday at an auction in the southern city of Nuremberg. The buyer wished to remain anonymous, according to auction house Weidler. The 1914 painting of the city hall in Munich was put up for sale by two elderly sisters, whose grandfather bought the artwork in 1916, when Hitler was in his 20s. The work measures 28cm by 22cm. Experts consider his work to be of mediocre quality.
LESOTHO
Coup leaders leave nation
A renegade general accused of leading a failed coup attempt in Lesotho has left the kingdom along with two of his rivals as part of a deal to restore security, a South African mediator said on Saturday. Lieutenant General Tlali Kamoli is under investigation for treason and murder following the Aug. 30 putsch, which saw the military attack several police installations and the prime minister’s residence, killing one police officer. Kamoli as well as a rival general, Maaparankoe Mahao, and Lesotho Police Commissioner Lhotatso Tsooana left the small mountain kingdom on Friday for “working visits” in Uganda, Sudan and Algeria, respectively, South African Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a statement.
ALBANIA
Thousands protest in capital
Tens of thousands of Albanians protested on Saturday against their government’s economic policies, including tax and energy price increases. The demonstration on the main boulevard of Tirana, the capital, also demanded action against the nation’s unemployment rate of nearly 18 percent. The protest, which ended peacefully at mid-afternoon, was held by supporters of the main opposition Democratic Party and its leader, Tirana Mayor Lulzim Basha. He has accused the governing Socialists of taking the nation into recession, and his party’s legislators have been boycotting parliament since September, saying that the coalition government is ignoring their complaints.
GERMANY
Antiforeigner rally in Berlin
About 500 protesters, among them neo-Nazis and angry local residents, protested in the capital on Saturday against the construction of a center for refugees seeking political asylum. A large number of police kept watch over the protest march and over a large antifascist counter-demonstration in the eastern Berlin working class district of Marzahn. Demonstrators denounced the lack of consultation of local residents about the center and demanded “Protection for us and our children,” while some chanted: “We are not Nazis, but people.”
UNITED STATES
Police officer shoots boy
A Cleveland police officer shot and wounded a 12-year-old boy who was carrying an imitation pistol outside a recreation center on Saturday after witnesses said the boy had brandished the gun on a playground, the authorities said. Two police officers responded to the scene and ordered the boy to raise his hands, but he refused and reached for a gun in his waistband, the Cleveland Division of Police said in a statement. The officers fired several shots, striking the boy once in the abdomen, police and emergency medical services officials said. He was taken to a hospital in serious condition and underwent surgery.
TOBAGO
German couple murdered
An elderly German couple were found murdered on a beach near their home on Saturday, according to police. The bodies of Conrad Keale, 74, and his wife, Bridgette Keale, 71, bore marks of violence, police said. A television report said the bodies appeared to have machete wounds. Police said the couple arrived on Oct. 25. They had been staying at their home in Bacolet on the southwest coast. They were last seen alive on Friday evening. Police said a gardener arrived at their home on Saturday morning and when he could not find them, went to a nearby beach, where he discovered the body of Bridgette Keale. The police were called and the second body was found on the same beach.
COLOMBIA
FARC to release captives
President Juan Manuel Santos said rebel leaders in the coming week plan to release a high-ranking general whose capture led the government to suspend peace talks. Santos said on Saturday via Twitter that authorities are working out details to receive General Ruben Dario Alzate and four other captives. Members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) captured Alzate and two others on Nov. 9 in a remote area of western Colombia. Santos responded by suspending talks underway in Cuba to end the country’s half-century-old civil war. The president has said the two-year-old talks would resume after Alzate’s release. The 55-year-old general, a counterinsurgency specialist, is the highest-ranking officer ever captured by the FARC.
UNITED STATES
Rape at frat house reported
The University of Virginia suspended its fraternities and related social activities until Jan. 9 after an alleged 2012 gang rape in a fraternity house was reported last week in Rolling Stone magazine. In the meantime, the university plans to hold meetings of students, faculty, alumni and other groups “to discuss our next steps in preventing sexual assault and sexual violence” at the school, president Teresa Sullivan said in a statement posted yesterday on the school’s Web site. The Rolling Stone article reports an alleged gang rape at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house and references the university’s poor handling of it and other cases of sexual assault. Sullivan has asked the Charlottesville, Virginia, police to investigate the 2012 assault and urged anyone with information to come forward. “The wrongs described in Rolling Stone are appalling and have caused all of us to re-examine our responsibility to this community,” Sullivan said. “Rape is an abhorrent crime that has no place in the world, let alone on the campuses and grounds of our nation’s colleges and universities.”
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
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