UAE
Tweeting sisters jailed
United Arab Emirates authorities are holding three sisters in secret detention for using social media to advocate on behalf of their political activist brother, Amnesty International said. Asma Khalifa al-Suwaidi and her sisters, Mariam and Alyaziyah, were called to an Abu Dhabi police station for questioning on Feb. 15 after tweeting: “I miss my brother,” the London-based group said in a statement on Friday. Issa al-Suwaidi was among 94 people put on trial in 2013 for suspected links to al-Islah, a local franchise of Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood, and accused of conspiring to overthrow the government. “The authorities are clearly punishing these women for speaking out on Twitter to draw attention to their brother’s unfair trial,” Philip Luther, director of Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa program, said in a statement.
NIGERIA
Suspected bomber kills four
A female suspected suicide bomber on Saturday killed two passers-by and her alleged accomplice in an attack in northeast Nigeria, witnesses and security sources told reporters. Moments before the explosion, the suspect and her accomplice, had tried to board a bus, but were stopped by the driver. “The suicide mission took place at around 11:30am, when two women wearing hijabs tried to board a commercial vehicle, but the wary driver resisted,” a security source said. “One of the women was wearing the bomb around her waist and it exploded after the bus departed, killing the other woman and two other people,” the source added. Witnesses said the two tried to board the bus in the village of Ngamdu, about 100km from Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state. After the explosion, residents remained in their home s, leaving the four corpses on the road, witnesses said.
FRANCE
AFP sorry for death report
Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Saturday issued an apology to French industrialist Martin Bouygues, chairman and CEO of the conglomerate Bouygues, for reporting his death. “We take this incident very seriously and are carrying out an investigation among editorial staff to understand how such an error could have been made,” AFP global news director Michele Leridon said. “We offer our humblest apologies to Martin Bouygues, his loved ones, his group and all our clients.” The error arose from a misunderstanding between a village mayor and an AFP journalist who was following up a tip that Bouygues had died. AFP immediately withdrew its erroneous report when the mistake was realized. AFP chairman and chief executive Emmanuel Hoog also apologized — in a tweet — to Bouygues and his family for the “unacceptable error.” The conglomerate earlier issued a statement denying that the tycoon had died. “Bouygues categorically denies that its chairman and CEO Martin Bouygues has died and deeply regrets that such a rumor has been allowed to spread,” the group said in a statement.
MYANMAR
White elephant caught
Officials have found a rare, “white” elephant in the jungles of the western Ayeyarwady Region. Forestry official Tun Tun Oo says the seven-year-old female was captured by his department on Friday, six weeks after it was spotted in a reserve in Pathein Township. “We had to be careful,” he said. “It is wild. We did not want the elephant or the forestry department officials to get hurt.” Myanmar has eight albino elephants in captivity.
‘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