VENEZUELA
Smuggling probe extended
President Nicolas Maduro extended a crackdown on contraband to a second state as he steps up his effort to stop smuggling along the border with Colombia. Maduro on Monday declared a state of emergency across three municipalities in Zulia State and shuttered the Paraguachon border crossing with Colombia. “Our people are targeted by smugglers, criminal gangs; we will liberate them from all of that,” Maduro said in a televised address. An additional 3,000 troops were being deployed to border towns, and only indigenous Wayuu would be permitted passage to Colombia, he said.
CANADA
Two candidates ousted
The governing Conservative Party of Canada on Monday dropped two of its candidates for the House of Commons because of embarrassing videos featuring them. The Canadian Broadcasting Corp replayed hidden camera footage showing one candidate, Jerry Bance, taking a coffee cup from a sink he was fixing in a customer’s kitchen and then urinating in it. The video, made by a consumer affairs program in 2012, shows Bance rinsing the mug before returning it to the sink. The Conservatives also said that a candidate named Tim Dutaud had been removed by the party because of a series of prank calls he recorded and posted on YouTube about six years ago. In one of them, Dutaud, a real-estate agent, pretends to be mentally disabled while dealing with a cellphone company.
UNITED STATES
Clinton defends e-mail use
Presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said she does not need to apologize for using a private e-mail account and server while at the Department of State because, “what I did was allowed.” Clinton spoke to reporters during a campaign swing through Iowa, which holds the first vote in the state-by-state nominating race. Clinton said lingering questions about her use of e-mail while serving as secretary of state have not damaged her campaign. “It’s a distraction, certainly, but it hasn’t in any way affected the plan for our campaign,” she said.
UNITED STATES
White alligator dies
A rare white alligator has died at the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans. The Audubon Nature Institute announced the death of “Spots” the alligator on Monday. The alligator was 28 years old. The cause of death is being investigated. Spots had a rare genetic condition called leucism, which reduces color pigmentation in the skin. The institute said Spots was one of 17 alligator hatchlings recovered in 1986 by the Louisiana Land and Exploration Company.
NEPAL
Police search for US teacher
Police yesterday said that they are searching a river where the body of a 27-year-old teacher from Austin, Texas, was thrown after she was hammered to death. Authorities are searching the Seti River for the body of Dahlia Yehia, who disappeared from the resort town of Pokhara in western Nepal last month, police official Hari Bahadur Pal said. Police have arrested a local teacher, Narayan Paudel, who was hosting Yehia while she was in Pokhara to help people affected by April’s devastating earthquake. Pal said Paudel confessed to the crime and described it, including where he threw the body into the river. Pal said authorities plan to seek the maximum sentence of life imprisonment for Paudel, 30. Authorities said the motive behind the murder was money, according to Pal.
INDIA
Six arrested over rape
Police yesterday said they had arrested six men after a teenager alleged she was gang-raped after being lured to a hotel on the promise of a job. The 17-year-old girl told police she had traveled from her home in New Delhi to the western city of Jaipur with neighbors who had promised her work there. “She was then confined to a hotel where 10 people, including the manager, took turns to rape her. She managed to escape last week and file a complaint in Delhi,” a police officer said in Delhi. “Based on her complaint we have arrested six men and we are studying the CCTV footage from the hotel to nab the rest of the suspects,” he said on condition of anonymity. The alleged attack on Aug. 30 adds to a grim record of sexual assaults in the nation, which have sparked domestic and international outrage.
THAILAND
British academic released
A British academic who accused a Thai official of plagiarism, and whose name later showed up on a national security blacklist as a potential danger to society, yesterday said he had been freed after being held for four days at a Bangkok airport. Wyn Ellis, a long-term resident of Thailand with British and Thai citizenship, was freed late on Monday after he was detained shortly after arriving from Europe on Thursday. Ellis is working on a sustainable rice program for the UN in Thailand. He discovered just a few days ago he had been blacklisted, apparently because of a 2009 letter written by the man he had accused of copying his work. “I am out and I am off the blacklist,” Ellis told reporters yesterday after spending four days in a cell with 15 other people.
TURKEY
Blast kills 14 police officers
A roadside bomb targeting a bus yesterday killed 14 policemen, state-run Anadolu news agency reported, the second major attack on security forces this week as clashes between the government and Kurdish gunmen intensify. The attack follows Turkish airstrikes on several Kurdish rebel bases in northern Iraq overnight. Commando units also clashed with PKK fighters after 16 troops were killed on Sunday, the highest toll from a single attack against Turkish soldiers since violence flared in July, shattering a three-year lull. “The PKK is increasingly shifting attacks to urban areas and targeting policemen to inflict greater damage on security forces, while targeting soldiers in rural areas,” Nihat Ali Ozcan, who studies the group at the Economic Policy Research Foundation in Ankara, said by telephone. “If the government can’t exert control in the area, spiraling violence could increase the risk of a civil war amid growing nationalist backlash.”
LEBANON
Sandstorm strikes
An unseasonal sandstorm has hit Lebanon and Syria, reducing visibility and sending dozens to hospitals with breathing difficulties. The storm hit the coastal capital of Beirut yesterday, a day after it engulfed the eastern Bekaa Valley and neighboring Syria further to the east. Officials advised people to stay indoors. The state news agency said at least 80 people fainted or suffered breathing problems because of the fine dust. People have been warned against burning trash that has piled up on Beirut streets this summer, sparking a political crisis and protests. In Syria, the storm reached the capital, Damascus. The state al-Watan newspaper said it forced the government to halt its airstrikes against rebel fighters north of the central province of Hama.
‘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