ITALY
Dog prevents assault
A cocker spaniel on Monday was hailed a “hero” after saving his owner from an attacker by biting the aggressor and sending him fleeing. A 37-year-old woman was walking her dog in a Milan park when she was attacked by a man who grasped her around the throat and started groping her, media reports said. The cocker spaniel jumped to her defense, biting and scratching the man, who fled after the woman bit him on the arm as well, the reports said. The woman called the police, who shortly afterward arrested a 21-year-old man from Sri Lanka, who had been found sitting on a bench in the vicinity, nursing wounds to his legs and a bite mark on his arm. The woman was taken to hospital to be treated for shock.
FIJI
Five charged with sedition
Five men have been charged with sedition and “inciting communal antagonism,” police said yesterday, adding that more arrests were possible. Three of the group appeared in court after Police Commissioner Ben Groenewald said training of a “seditious nature” had been detected in Ra Province on Viti Levu. Another two people were still to appear in court and police said others could also be charged. Media reports said a former soldier in the British army had been secretly conducting military-style training for 20 villages over the past three months. The Sun newspaper’s Web site said the training was “allegedly linked to the setting up of the so-called Christian Sovereign State of Ra by a breakaway group in the province.” Groenewald said police had received information that firearms were involved, but this had not been substantiated “nor have we located weapons to that effect.” Private ownership of firearms is illegal in the South Pacific nation, which has experienced four coups in the past 28 years.
AFGHANISTAN
Taliban condemns IS video
The Taliban have condemned a “horrific” video that appears to show fighters from the Islamic State group (IS), formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, blowing up bound and blindfolded Afghan prisoners with explosives. The video spotlights the growing rivalry between the two groups as the Islamic State makes gradual inroads into the nation, challenging the Taliban on their home turf. The video, apparently shot in the east of the country against the backdrop of hilly grasslands enveloped with fog, describes the prisoners as “apostates” aligned with the Taliban or the government, but the Taliban described them as civilians. “A horrific video [shows] kidnappers who associate themselves with DAESH [an Arabic-language acronym for Islamic State] brutally martyring several white-bearded tribal elders and villagers with explosives,” the Taliban said in a statement on Tuesday. “This offense and other such brutal actions by a few irresponsible ignorant individuals under the guise of Islam and Muslims are intolerable.”
EGYPT
Court sentences 253
A military court on Tuesday sentenced 253 people to life in prison in absentia and 203 others to shorter prison terms for destroying public buildings in 2013, the state news agency said. The agency did not specify the identities of the individuals in the two cases, but verdicts in a slew of mass trials of Muslim Brotherhood members and people accused of links to the outlawed group have drawn international criticism of the nation’s judicial system and human rights record.
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
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