JAPAN
Most oppose new laws: poll
More than half of voters in Japan are opposed to their government’s plans to enact legislation this month that would allow Japanese troops to fight abroad for the first time since World War II, a newspaper poll showed yesterday. Despite big public protests, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling bloc wants to pass the security bills before parliament ends its session on Sept. 27. A vote in the upper house is expected this week. A poll carried out over the weekend and published yesterday by the Asahi Shimbun showed 54 percent of respondents opposed the legislation, compared with 29 percent who backed it, while 68 percent saw no need to enact the bills during the current session. Support for Abe’s government fell to 36 percent, the survey showed, the lowest rate since he took the office in December 2013 and down from 38 percent in last month’s poll. Abe’s disapproval rating inched up to 42 percent from 41 percent.
PAKISTAN
Explosions kills at least nine
A police official said a blast outside of a bus terminal in central Pakistan has killed at least nine people and wounded 48. Khalid Rauf said several of the wounded from the explosion on Sunday night in the city of Multan are in critical condition. He blamed the blast on a remote-controlled bomb. Another government official, Zahid Saleem, said it appeared to be a suicide attack. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Multan lies in a region dotted with thousands of religious seminaries, with several belonging to local al-Qaeda-linked militant outfits.
GABON
President Bongo tries again
The president on Sunday named a new opposition figure to a senior ministerial post a day after another senior opponent declined the job, in a setback to his efforts to forge a united government ahead of next year’s election. President Ali Bongo named Mathieu Mboumba Nziengui, executive secretary of the opposition Union of the Gabonese People (UPG), as minister of state for agriculture. On Saturday, the leader of another wing of the UPG, Dieudonne Moukagni Iwangou, rejected the offer of the position, calling for political change in the oil-rich central African country. The reshuffle, announced in a presidential decree on Friday, expanded the Cabinet to 41 members from 34 and was seen as an attempt to silence critics of the Bongo family’s domination of Gabonese political life since independence from France in 1960. The president also named technocrat Jean Sylvain Bekale Nze as minister for town planning and housing after Jean-Robert Endamane, from the Bongo-allied RPG party, refused the post.
INDIA
Truck crash kills at least 18
At least 18 workers were killed when their overloaded truck overturned in southern India early yesterday, police said. Another 17 people were injured in the accident near Gundepalli, a village in Andhra Pradesh state, police officer Ravi Prakash said. The truck carrying cement and other construction materials was taking the workers to a construction site 400km southeast of Hyderabad, the state capital. He said a preliminary investigation suggested that driver negligence caused the crash, as he appeared to have fallen asleep while driving. India has the highest annual road death toll in the world, according to the WHO. More than 110,000 people are killed every year in road accidents across India, according to police.
‘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