BANGLADESH
Human traffickers arrested
Police have arrested at least 20 human traffickers in the past month, including alleged kingpin Dil Mohammad, during the weekend in the southern town of Teknaf, which borders Myanmar. Teknaf police inspector Kabir Hossain said Mohammad, 45, was arrested after arriving in Bangladesh from Malaysia. “Mohammad has been wanted in Malaysia and Thailand for smuggling hundreds of poor Bangladeshis to Malaysia by using rickety boats in the Bay of Bengal,” Hossain said. The government targeted smugglers in May after persecuted Rohingyas from Myanmar and economic migrants from Bangladesh were abandoned at sea en route to Southeast Asia. A crackdown by Thailand led to the unraveling of people-smuggling networks that saw thousands stranded in open waters and dumped in jungle camps.
CHINA
Illegal timber trade growing
The illicit timber trade between Myanmar and the country is rebounding to near its peak of a decade ago as loggers push deeper into Myanmar to strip its forests, the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) said in a report released yesterday. The agency urged both governments to stop the trade worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year that is reducing Myanmar’s forests and supplies China’s wood-processing industry, which makes furniture for domestic and international markets. The nongovernmental organization said Chinese businesses illegally log mountains, pay off corrupt officials in gold bars and bribe armed groups and the military to pass through checkpoints. The logging is done by poor Chinese villagers. Dozens of them were convicted earlier this year following raids by Burmese authorities, but the “shadowy kingpins” who organize the trade and reap the profits remain untouched, the report said. EIA campaign director Julian Newman said the volume of illegal timber crossing from Myanmar into China was approaching 900,000m3 a year — not far off the 2005 peak of about 1 million cubic meters that fell after Chinese authorities temporarily clamped down.
INDIA
US woman alleges rape
A US tourist has accused two men of raping her in the popular Himalayan hill station of Dharamsala, police said yesterday, the latest sex attack on a foreigner. The 46-year-old woman told police that she was walking through a crowded market area of the town on Tuesday evening when the attack occurred. The woman, who had been traveling in India for about a month and was alone in Dharamsala, said she passed out after being grabbed by the unidentified men. “She says that after waking up she realized that she had been assaulted ... and decided to approach us a day later,” Kangra District police superintendent Abhishek Dhullar said. “Police are awaiting detailed results of the woman’s medical examination, seeking witnesses to the incident and studying CCTV footage of the area,” he said.
THAILAND
Cadets’ phones smashed
When the military said cadets cannot bring phones to training, they mean it. A video clip that has ignited social media this week shows what happened to some officers-in-training who broke that rule. It shows a row of uniformed cadets with their iPhones and Samsung smartphones on the ground beside a concrete block. The voice of a commanding officer orders them to “smash” their phones. The video has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times in the past few days, drawing mostly criticism that the punishment does not fit the crime.
MEXICO
Possible remains found
The remains of a second of 43 missing Mexican students have possibly been identified, authorities said on Wednesday, almost a year after a crime that shocked the nation. Attorney General Arely Gomez said forensic experts from Austria’s Innsbruck University found “indications that establish a possible match” between Jhosivani Guerrero de la Cruz and DNA extracted from a bone. In December last year, the university identified 19-year-old Alexander Mora among a set of 17 charred remains. Wednesday’s announcement came more than a week after the official investigation was questioned by an independent probe.
UNITED STATES
Stay of execution granted
An Oklahoma court on Wednesday granted a last-minute stay of execution to death row inmate Richard Glossip, sentenced to death for a 1997 fatal beating of a motel owner. The two-week reprieve was announced about three hours before the 52-year-old Glossip — who has long proclaimed his innocence — was set to die by lethal injection. “In order for this court to give fair consideration to the materials included with his subsequent application for post-conviction relief, we hereby grant an emergency stay of execution for two weeks,” the order issued by the Oklahoma criminal appeals court said. Glossip’s lawyers produced new evidence earlier this week, but Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin said it was not “credible evidence” of his innocence and refused to delay his execution.
RUSSIA
Elton John in Putin prank
A pair of Russian comedians say they impersonated Russian President Vladimir Putin in a prank phone call to British singer Elton John, Russian media reported on Wednesday. Vladimir Krasnov and Aleksei Stolyarov, known in Russia for targeting celebrities and politicians with their audacious stunts, said they called the British singer a day after he told journalists he would like to meet Putin to discuss gay rights. “Yes, it was us,” Krasnov was quoted as saying by the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday denied that Putin had made the call and suggested it could have been a prank after Elton John posted a photograph of the Russian president on Instagram thanking him for the conversation. “Thank-you to President Vladimir Putin for reaching out and speaking via telephone with me today. I look to forward to meeting with you face-to-face to discuss LGBT equality in Russia,” the gay singer and campaigner wrote on Instagram.
UNITED STATES
Artist to sell Trump art
An Oregon artist who used menstrual blood to paint an image of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Wednesday said she would sell posters as well as the original, created in response to remarks by the billionaire about Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly. The portrait by Portland-based painter and activist Sarah Levy drew worldwide attention as Republican candidates prepared for their second debate, which was aired on CNN on Wednesday. It was after the first debate last month that Trump said that Kelly, a moderator who had questioned him pointedly about some unflattering comments about women, “had blood coming out of her wherever.” “To think that he could talk this way about the basic functioning of a woman’s reproductive system, not just to avoid tough political questions, but to insult Kelly’s intelligence … was infuriating and needed to be called out,” Levy said.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in 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
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