NEW ZEALAND
Drummer arrested again
AC/DC drummer Phil Rudd has been arrested again, his lawyer said. Details of the charges were unclear and police refused to confirm the 61-year-old had been arrested, less than two weeks after he was sentenced to home detention after pleading guilty to threatening to kill and drugs charges. However, his lawyer Craig Tuck said Rudd would be appearing in court today. “All I can say is he has been arrested and will be appearing on Monday at 10am today in the Tauranga District Court,” Tuck said. When Rudd was sentenced to eight months’ home detention, the judge warned him that jail would be the next step if his rock star lifestyle continued.
BURKINA FASO
Treason trail denounced
The party of deposed leader Blaise Compaore on Saturday denounced moves by the interim parliament to put him on trial for high treason, saying it was aimed at stopping its members from contesting upcoming elections. Lawmakers on Thursday adopted a resolution asking the High Court to put Compaore on trial for high treason and violating the constitution. The nation has been run by transitional authorities since Compaore fled the country last year after a popular uprising erupted over his plans to extend his 27-year rule. “We see... a bid by the authorities of the interim government to prevent some of our comrades from contesting upcoming elections,” said Mathieu Some, an official in Compaore’s Congress for Democracy and Progress party. The interim parliament has also accused former-premier Luc Adolphe Tiao and his government of “intentional assault, murder and complicity in assault and murder.” Compaore, who came to power in a coup in 1987, sparked mass anger when he announced his intention to change the constitution so he could stand for a third term this year. Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets and were met with a brutal crackdown by security forces.
SOUTH AFRICA
Crash injury count reduced
The final count of commuters injured in a rush hour train collision on Friday has been revised to 239 people, down from the more than 300 originally reported, a spokeswoman for the nation’s rail service said on Saturday. Only eight people were still hospitalized, Metrorail spokeswoman for the Gauteng Province Lillian Mofokeng said. “There is no one that is critically injured,” she said. No fatalities were reported. Mofokeng said she left the scene of the accident in the early hours of Saturday morning after all the injured had been rushed to hospital. “We have managed to clear the scene, but technicians are still repairing the area,” she said.
ALGERIA
Al-Qaeda claims ambush
Al-Qaeda’s North African branch on Saturday said it killed 14 soldiers in an ambush southwest of the capital, in what would be the deadliest attack on the army in over a year. The El Khabar newspaper, citing security sources, reported earlier in the day that troops were killed by a terrorist group on the road to Tifran, a wooded area in the south of Ain Defla Province, 140km from the capital. The ambush took place on Friday night at the start of the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed the attack in an unverified statement posted online late on Saturday night. “The knights of Islam have on the first night of Eid killed 14 soldiers in an ambush on an army platoon in the area of Djebel Louh,” it said.
ARGENTINA
Capital votes in run-off
The conservative opposition Propuesta Republicana (PRO) party was expected to win yesterday’s mayoral run-off election in Buenos Aires, retaining its power in the capital ahead of presidential voting later this year. Favored to win is PRO candidate Horacio Rodriguez Larreta, who has 50 percent support, according to the average of three recent surveys by local pollsters. His rival, ECO party candidate and former minister of the economy Martin Lousteau, trails with 40 percent support. Rodriguez Larreta, 50, is the chief-of-staff of Buenos Aires Mayor and possible presidential candidate Mauricio Macri. He won the July 5 round of mayoral voting, but did not garner enough votes to avoid a run-off against the 44-year-old Lousteau.
GREECE
Fires brought under control
Firefighters on Saturday succeeded in bringing two large wildfires in Athens and the Peloponnese Peninsula under control, but an off-duty police officer is believed to have died in the flames. A body found in the Athens district of Kareas, where the fire broke out on Friday, was confirmed to be a missing 47-year-old police officer, who was on leave and had failed to return home from a walk in the area. Two men, a Greek and a Bulgarian, were arrested on suspicion of accidentally starting the fire that ravaged the capital’s northeastern outskirts after they allegedly lit a fire to smoke bees out of their hives to collect honey. A fire in the southeast of the Peloponnese Peninsula, near the coastal town of Neapoli, destroyed 35 homes and agricultural land, state ERT television reported. Overall, nearly 80 fires broke out on Friday, prompting the government to request aid from Europe.
ITALY
Egyptian smugglers arrested
Police in Sicily have arrested three Egyptians who were allegedly in charge of a smuggling boat on which a 10-year-old Syrian girl with diabetes died after the smugglers threw her insulin overboard. The 335 migrants arrived in port in Augusta, Sicily, on Wednesday after a week at sea. Save the Children spokeswoman Giovanna di Benedetto on Saturday said the parents reported that as soon as the family of eight boarded, the traffickers threw the backpack containing the 10-year-old’s insulin overboard. She died during the trip. The ANSA news agency said the trio were arrested on suspicion of aiding illegal immigration, though not with homicide, since the smugglers who threw the insulin overboard were purportedly the trip organizers in Egypt.
VENEZUELA
Politician barred from office
The government has barred former Zulia state governor Pablo Perez from holding office for 10 years, the latest in a series of opposition politicians to be banned. The sanction against Perez was announced on Saturday by the opposition Democratic Unity coalition, which published the resolution dated June 3 on its Web site.
UNITED STATES
Dad drives, films birth
A Texas man filmed his wife giving birth to their 4.5kg son next to him as he drove through Houston in an effort to reach a birthing center in time. Jonathan and Lesia Pettijohn were stuck in traffic for more than an hour last week when her water broke. Jonathan Pettijohn told KHOU-TV in Houston that they did not pull over because there was no apparent danger to his wife or the baby. The video shows him calmly instructing his wife while she screams: “It’s coming out! It’s coming out!” After the birth, he says: “We did it! High-five, babe!”
‘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