CHINA
More detentions over blast
Prosecutors have detained 11 government officials and company executives over the Aug. 12 warehouse explosion that killed at least 139 people in the port city of Tianjin. A notice on the national prosecutor’s Web site yesterday said the detainees included current and retired officials, along with others working for the company that runs the port. All are accused of dereliction of duty and abusing their positions. An investigation has found that the warehouse was storing more chemicals than it was equipped to handle and had kept some in a loading zone rather than storing them securely. Police have already detained 12 employees of Ruihai Logistics, which owned the warehouse.
HONG KONG
Bombing victim returns
A nine-year-old girl seriously injured by the bombing of Bangkok’s Erawan shrine that killed 20 people — the youngest person wounded by the blast — returned to the territory yesterday. The girl, named by local media as Jasmine Chu, was taken to Princess Margaret Hospital. “Now I hope my daughter will recover soon. In the past two days she has been getting better and she is in a better mood. She is just worried about her school and her homework [after summer vacation],” her father, Chu King, said. Jasmine underwent three rounds of surgery in Bangkok — including a seven-hour operation to remove a large piece of shrapnel from one of her thighs, the South China Morning Post reported.
AUSTRALIA
Alleged recruiter loses bid
A Sydney man accused of recruiting foreign fighters to battle the Syrian regime yesterday lost a court challenge to the law that he was charged with breaking. Hamdi Alqudsi, 41, was charged under the Crime (Foreign Incursions and Recruitment) Act 1978 after he allegedly helped seven men go to Syria between June and October 2013 so they could fight for Jabhat al-Nusra and other al-Qaeda affiliates. Alqudsi was the first person to be charged under the law with recruiting foreign fighters for the five-year-old Syrian conflict. The law was replaced last year with tougher counterterrorism legislation. The New South Wales Supreme Court judge rejected Alqudsi’s application to have the charge dismissed and ruled that he should stand trial. Alqudsi’s lawyer, Zali Burrows, has said that her client was giving only innocuous travel advice. He has pleaded not guilty to the recruitment charge and is to go on trial next month.
INDIA
Murder case grips nation
A former media executive has been arrested on suspicion of murdering her daughter for having an affair with her stepson, Mumbai police said yesterday. Indrani Mukerjea is accused, along with her driver and her second husband, of strangling Sheena Bora in 2012 before dumping her body in a forest in Maharashtra state and setting it alight. Mukerjea, a cofounder and a former executive of television company INX Media, is married to ex-Star India chief executive Peter Mukerjea, believed to be her third husband. Police believe the motive for the killing had been Indrani Mukerjea’s dislike of her daughter’s apparent relationship with Rahul Mukerjea, Peter Mukerjea’s son from a previous marriage, Deputy Police Commissioner Dhananjay Kulkarni said. Newspapers and TV news channels yesterday were abuzz with details of the scandal. Kulkarni said new information had just come to light which led police to make the arrests more than three years after the killing.
UKRAINE
Truce as school starts
The warring sides in the conflict in the east of the country have called for a ceasefire on Tuesday, the day the new school year is to begin. Speaking after a meeting of the Trilateral Contact Group in Minsk, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) representative Martin Sajdik said on Wednesday that the sides “agreed to jointly verify the fulfillment of this initiative.” The group, which is seeking an end to the conflict that has killed more than 6,400 people, includes representatives from Ukraine, the OSCE and Russia. Representatives of the Russia-backed separatist rebels also take part.
GREECE
Tsipras limits partners
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Wednesday raised the political stakes ahead of next month’s early national election, saying he would not enter a coalition with the main center-right and centrist opposition parties even if he needs their backing to govern. Tsipras resigned last week, barely seven months into his four-year mandate. He is seeking a stronger mandate, after his leftist-led coalition effectively lost its parliamentary majority when dozens of his own lawmakers refused to back new austerity measures demanded for a bailout loan. Tsipras is widely expected to win the snap election, which is most likely to be held on Sept. 20, but it is unclear whether he will secure enough seats in parliament to govern alone.
SPAIN
Officials scrap photo fine
Officials have scrapped an 800 euro (US$900) fine against a woman for posting a picture on Facebook of an illegally parked police car after admitting the image did not contravene a controversial security law. The picture, which was posted online last month, showed a police car parked in a disabled parking space in a town in the southeastern province of Alicante, accompanied by critical remarks using strong language. The police said the officers were rushing to stop vandals in a nearby park and quickly filed a complaint against the woman, citing controversial new legislation known as the citizens’ security law that took effect on July 1. However, the central government’s representative in Alicante shelved the complaint, with a spokesman saying it had “nothing to do with the Citizens Security Law, it was just a picture of a vehicle that was published.”
RUSSIA
MP wants Kerry sanctioned
A member of the upper house of parliament is calling for US Secretary of State John Kerry and his deputies to be placed on Moscow’s sanctions list. Igor Morozov, a member of the Federation Council’s foreign affairs committee, told news agency RIA-Novosti on Wednesday that the move would be retaliation for the US issuing a limited visa to chamber speaker Valentina Matvienko, who is under US sanctions in connection with Moscow’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
MEXICO
Abused animals sent to US
A dozen animals that suffered devastating abuse in captivity, including eight lions and a coyote, were on Wednesday moved to a sanctuary in the US. The animals, which also included other large cats, were rescued separately between 2012 and this year, and moved with the help of the navy to a sanctuary outside Denver, Colorado. “Cancan,” a 12-year-old coyote, had been held in captivity for witchcraft practices, while “Zimba,” an African lion that is afraid of open spaces, was found with cuts on its front legs. The animals are part of a larger group of 22 cats that are to be sent to the US.
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number
Australian police yesterday said a 40-year-old itinerant with mental illness was behind a Sydney shopping center stabbing rampage that killed six people, including a new mum whose nine-month-old baby is still in hospital with serious wounds. New South Wales Police Assistant Commissioner Anthony Cooke said the assailant — who was shot and killed by a senior police officer at the scene on Saturday — was Queensland man Joel Cauchi. Five women and one male security guard were killed in the attack as Cauchi roved through a packed shopping center in the city’s Bondi Junction neighborhood with a large knife. Twelve more people