CHINA
China, India conduct drills
Chinese and Indian border troops have conducted a joint disaster relief exercise, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday, signaling warming ties between the two Asian powers as they seek to resolve a border dispute. Leaders from the two nations pledged in May last year to cool their border dispute, which dates back to a brief border war in 1962, although a messy territorial disagreement remains. The two armies practiced handling scenarios like rescuing trapped herders on Saturday, a statement posted on the defense ministry Web site said. “The exercises are designed to implement the Chinese-India border cooperation agreement, to jointly safeguard peace and stability in these areas,” the statement said.
CAMBODIA
Kids killed by grenade
Two children have been killed trying to prise open a discarded rocket-propelled grenade with an axe, police said yesterday. The children, cousins aged 12 and 14, came across the unexploded ordnance on Friday while hunting for wild birds close to their home in Kampong Thom Province, local commune police chief Pen Sam Oth said. “They used an axe to try and open up the old grenade and it eventually exploded, killing them both instantly,” he said, adding that a third boy escaped unharmed and alerted police and local villagers.
CHINA
Reward for ‘terror’ reports
The government has pledged to reward people who report online “terrorist” content up to 100,000 yuan (US$15,200) for each tip-off, after giving out 2 million yuan in rewards last year, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. “The Internet has become a channel for terrorists to spread extremist religious ideas, provoke ethnic conflicts and advocate separatism,” Xinhua quoted an unnamed source from the Cyberspace Administration of China’s reporting center as saying. The person said microblogs and popular instant messaging services such as WeChat were among tools used by terrorists to “brainwash” young women and children, and encouraged the public to provide tip-offs via a telephone hotline.
SRI LANKA
No amnesty for rebels?
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein has said that Tamil rebels still detained years after the end of a civil war should not be granted universal amnesty, chief minister of the former war zone C. V. Wigneswaran said on Sunday. Tamil political and civil society groups have long demanded the unconditional release of more than 200 suspected Tamil separatists, but the government has rejected demands for universal amnesty. “He [Zeid] said it is not the common practice of the international community to give common pardon to such suspects,” Wigneswaran told reporters in Jaffna. “The issue should be resolved through a legal process, but they should not be granted a common amnesty.”
AUSTRALIA
UN rights envoy appointed
A former immigration minister who began the policy of sending asylum seekers to Pacific island detention camps is to become the nation’s first special envoy for human rights. Philip Ruddock, 72, the second-longest-serving lawmaker in parliament, will promote the nation’s candidacy for membership to the UN Human Rights Council for the 2018 to 2020 term, Minister for Foreign Affairs Julia Bishop said in a statement yesterday. Ruddock will remain in parliament until elections are held later this year.
TURKEY
Erdogan criticizes US
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday lashed out at the US a week after President Barack Obama’s envoy visited a northern Syrian town that is under the control of Syrian Kurdish forces, which Ankara considers terrorists. Erdogan said Washington should choose between Ankara and the Kurdish Democratic Union Party as its partner. “How can we trust you? Is it me that is your partner or is it the terrorists in Kobani?,” he said. US Department of State spokesman Noel Clay in Washington reiterated the longstanding US policy that considers the PKK “to be a terrorist organization,” adding that “we continue to call on the PKK to immediately cease its campaign of violence. A resumed political process offers the best hope for greater civil rights, security, and prosperity for all the citizens of Turkey.”
UNITED KINGDOM
Bus blast scares Londoners
The explosion of a red double decker bus in central London on Sunday alarmed witnesses unaware that it was actually a stunt for an action film starring Jackie Chan (成龍) and Pierce Brosnan. The bus was travelling across Lambeth Bridge, not far from parliament, when its top deck exploded with a large bang in a ball of flames. Author Sophie Kinsella said children in a nearby park had been “freaked” by the sight. “I was freaked too. Looked very real,” she wrote on Twitter. For some it was all too reminiscent of the July 7, 2005, attacks that killed dozens of people in London, including people on a red double decker bus.
MEXICO
Oil platform fire kills two
Petroleos Mexico said a fire that erupted on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico killed two workers and injured eight. The fire on the Abkatun A platform off the coast of the southern state of Campeche was brought under control on Sunday morning and the installation was never abandoned, it said on Twitter. Pemex said the fire began in an area of compression equipment, but did not say what caused it.
UNITED STATES
Teen kills mom, neighbors
A 19-year-old killed his mother and two neighbors before turning his gun on himself in a shooting that brought SWAT and various emergency vehicles to a rural area in Texas, authorities said on Sunday. Uvalde County Sheriff Charlie Mendeke said Dylan Westerburg gunned down his mother on Friday afternoon, then went next door and killed two brothers, Arthur and Phinny Norton. Mendeke said investigators have not determined a clear motive for the shootings. Phinny Norton, 60, had some “sort of romantic relationship” with Westerburg’s mother, 42-year-old Jennifer Diane Jacques, Mendeke said. The family’s dog had also been killed.
SIERRA LEONE
Armed guards for graves
New security measures were put in place on Sunday at cemeteries in Freetown after grave robbers used pickaxes and sledge hammers to pry open tombs and steal coffins and jewelry. About 250 graves were targeted in three of the capital’s seven cemeteries over the past two months, the Freetown City Council said in a statement on Saturday. Twenty-four-hour security was now in place at all the city cemeteries, including armed police guards, an official said. Abdul Rahman, caretaker of the Kingtom cemetery, told a radio station robbers stole “chains, wedding rings and clothes from the dead” and sometimes expensive mahogany coffins.
‘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