BURUNDI
Political protests resume
Protesters on Sunday took to the streets of the capital, Bujumbura, after the end of a two-day truce following a week of violent political protests. The nation has been rocked by demonstrations that began last week against a bid by President Pierre Nkurunziza to serve a third term in office. About 200 protesters gathered, shouting at police officers who have for days blocked roads to prevent demonstrators from moving into the center of the city. Nkurunziza has been in power since 2005. The opposition protesters announced a two-day truce over the weekend, but threatened to return to the streets yesterday unless Nkurunziza backs down. At least 10 people have died and scores more have been hurt since the protests began. Nearly 600 people have also been arrested, according to the police. The government linked a grenade attack that killed three people, including two police officers, in the early hours of Saturday to the opposition protests and branded the demonstrators “enemies of the state.”
HONG KONG
Police head pans Occupy
An outgoing police official has taken a parting shot at pro-democracy protesters who occupied busy streets in parts of the territory for nearly three months last year. Retiring Hong Kong Police Force commissioner Andy Tsang Wai-hung (曾偉雄) yesterday said that he was concerned about “increasing radicalization of protests” and “an increasing sense of lawlessness” among protesters. Tsang has been criticized over the police’s handling of the Occupy Central protests. The protests spiraled into chaos in September last year after police officers arrested student leaders and fired dozens of rounds of tear gas on demonstrators. Seven officers were arrested in November last year after they were caught on camera beating a handcuffed protester during a clash a month earlier.
INDIA
Rebels ambush convoy
Heavily armed separatist rebels have ambushed a paramilitary convoy in the remote northeast near the city of Guwahati, killing eight soldiers and injuring six others, officials said yesterday. The militants on Sunday opened fire on the troops before exploding a small bomb during the attack in underdeveloped Nagaland, close to the border with Myanmar, the state’s police chief said. Another four Assam Rifles troopers were missing, with a search underway in the area, about 200km north of the state capital, Kohima, an official said on condition of anonymity. The police think that the attack was carried out by the outlawed National Socialist Council of Nagaland, which has been campaigning for decades for a homeland for indigenous Naga tribes. The troopers in two vehicles came under attack as they returned to their camp from collecting drinking water nearby, the police said.
CHINA
Highway dog walker fined
A woman who took her dog for a walk on a highway while her car was parked in the middle of the road was “punished” by the police, state media said on Sunday. Her boyfriend was answering “an urgent call of nature,” with the couple’s car “in the middle of the highway” in the central Hubei Province on Friday last week, Xinhua news agency said, without giving further details. The “driver” was fined 200 yuan (US$32) and handed six penalty points, Xinhua added, without saying if it was the woman or her boyfriend. Friday was the first day of the May Day holiday, when traffic is often busy and the government relaxes fees on the nation’s toll-roads to boost tourism.
AUSTRALIA
Gifts sent to UK princess
The nation is to send a fine wool blanket embroidered with yellow flowers to Britain’s new princess, but the royal baby will also be honored with a more unusual gift — support for a rare possum. Fervent royalist Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the cot blanket made from Tasmanian merino wool and stitched with the nation’s floral emblem, the wattle, would be sent to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge after their new baby arrived on Saturday. In honor of the princess’ birth, the government is also to donate A$10,000 (US$7,830) to a Victorian State wildlife sanctuary to support research into the Mountain Pygmy-possum Burramys parvus, an unusual creature thought extinct until 1966.
DOMINICAN REPublic
Hotel sees partial collapse
Part of a small boutique hotel has collapsed in the colonial district of the capital Santo Domingo. There have been no fatalities or injuries. On Sunday, the government appointed a commission of experts to determine the cause of the partial collapse at the Hotel Frances Santo Domingo in a historic quarter that has been the focus of extensive public works projects. Minister of Tourism Francisco Javier Garcia said the government “very much regrets” the incident which impacted the hotel’s reception area and at least five rooms. The government is trying to make various improvements to Santo Domingo’s colonial district, which the UN cultural agency named a world heritage site.
BENIN
Elections fail to win majority
President Thomas Boni Yayi’s party won Benin’s parliamentary elections with 33 seats out of 83, but failed to secure an absolute majority, the Constitutional Court said on Sunday evening. The Beninese went to the polls on April 26 for elections regarded as a popularity test for Boni Yayi, accused by the opposition of wanting to “tinker” with the constitution to seek a third term in a presidential vote next year. “Emerging Benin Party [FCBE], 33 seats,” the president of the Constitutional Court Theodore Holo said in a statement, adding that the two principal opposition parties, The Union Makes the Nation and the Democratic Renewal Party secured 13 and 10 seats respectively. Partial results published on Friday already named the FCBE as the winner, but with 32 seats instead of 33, while attributing 15 seats instead of 13 to the Union Makes the Nation party. While the FCBE did not win an expected absolute majority, analysts said the opposition is so fragmented and unstructured that it would have to form alliances to carry any weight in the national assembly.
UNITED STATES
Star Trek stalwart dies
Grace Lee Whitney, who played Captain Kirk’s assistant on the original Star Trek series, has died. She was 85. Her son Jonathan Dweck said she died of natural causes on Friday in Coarsegold, California, about 80km north of Fresno. Whitney played Yeoman Janice Rand in the first eight episodes before being written out of the series. In her autobiography, she wrote that she became an alcoholic before getting treatment and regaining her career with the help of Leonard Nimoy, who starred as Spock in the series. She returned for the movie franchise, appearing in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
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