CHINA
Man stabs 10 children
A knife-wielding attacker yesterday stabbed 10 schoolchildren in Haikou on Hainan, severely injuring two, before killing himself, state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) reported on its microblog. The attacker stabbed six boys and four girls as they walked out of the gate of Yang Fan Primary School during their lunch period, an official at Haikou’s Longhu police station said. The children were taken to a local hospital, with two being treated for serious injuries that were not life threatening, CCTV said.
INDONESIA
Red-light area demolished
One of the nation’s oldest red-light districts was demolished yesterday in an operation overseen by hundreds of police and troops, as authorities press on with a plan to close all brothel areas in the nation. Dozens of illegal bars and brothels along a polluted riverside strip in north Jakarta — known locally as Kalijodo — were reduced to rubble by excavators in a matter of minutes. North Jakarta Mayor Rustam Effendi, who oversaw the demolition, said the buildings were illegal and the demolition would make way for a public park. The plan angered long-time residents and there had been fears that protesters would try to disrupt the demolition, but thousands living in the area agreed to leave in the days beforehand and the operation went smoothly. Prostitution is illegal in the country, but is rampant in major cities.
CHINA
CCP expels Xinjiang officials
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has expelled two senior officials in Xinjiang for corruption and transferred them to prosecutors, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said late on Sunday. In June last year, authorities announced an investigation into Alimjan Maimaitiming, 56, a former secretary-general in the government in Xinjiang. The following month it said Xie Hui (謝暉), who ran the Xinjiang prison system from 2010 until his promotion in 2013 to be a vice head of the Xinjiang public security bureau, was also under investigation. The commission said Alimjan Maimaitiming was probed over “forming cliques and factions,” destroying evidence, abusing his power and having improper sexual relations, while Xie had violated party discipline and rules for the appointment of officials and received “huge sums” from undetermined sources.
CHINA
More space shots planned
The China Manned Space Agency on Sunday said the Tiangong 2 space lab will lift off some time after June, followed by a pair of astronauts in the Shenzhou 11 spacecraft, who will dock with the lab and live on board for several days. Next year, the Tianzhou 1 cargo ship will be launched to dock with the Tiangong 2 and provide it with fuel and other supplies.
GERMANY
Online crime groups busted
Authorities yesterday said about 69 homes and offices across Europe were raided, several servers confiscated and suspects arrested in connection with online forums used to sell weapons, drugs and fake documents. The Federal Criminal Police Office said that the raids were carried out in cooperation with police in Bosnia, Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, Lithuania and Russia last week. The main suspect, a 27-year-old Bosnian, was arrested in his home country. Three German men, aged 21, 22 and 29, and two Syrian brothers, aged 19 and 28, were arrested in Germany.
SWITZERLAND
Expulsion bill defeated
Voters have rejected a proposal to automatically expel foreigners who commit even low-level crimes, handing a setback to a popular nationalist party that had put forward the measure. The initiative was rejected on Sunday by 59 percent of voters, a government Web site showed. It was the most controversial of a number of national and local issues in the referendum, propelling voter turnout to top more than 62 percent — which the state broadcaster said was the highest turnout since 1992.
UNITED KINGDOM
Ebola survivor discharged
London’s Royal Free Hospital said it has discharged Pauline Cafferkey, the Scottish nurse who has twice recovered from Ebola. Cafferkey, who had been suffering from a late complication from her latest infection with the lethal virus, was admitted last week for treatment with the hospital’s infectious diseases team. The hospital on Sunday said in a statement that she is not infectious. Cafferkey had been treated in October last year for meningitis that had developed from lingering Ebola virus in her system. She was first infected in 2014 while working in Sierra Leone.
UNITED STATES
Rocket launch canceled
At the last second, Elon Musk’s SpaceX scrubbed plans to launch a Falcon 9 rocket on Sunday, again delaying an attempt to put a satellite into orbit and then land the vehicle’s first stage intact on a sea platform, a step that might eventually slash costs. The 23-story rocket, carrying a communications satellite for Luxembourg-based SES SA, was less than two minutes from blast-off at 6:47pm when the launch team aborted the countdown, SpaceX said during a Web cast. Musk said that US Air Force safety officers stopped the countdown after a boat strayed into a restricted zone east of SpaceX’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station launch site. SpaceX resumed the countdown a few minutes later, aiming for a 7:21pm launch, but a technical issue automatically stopped the liftoff again, just a second before the planned launch.
MEXICO
New probe for students
A new probe is under way of a garbage dump where investigators believe the bodies of 43 missing students were incinerated, the attorney general’s office said on Sunday. Independent experts and relatives of the victims had earlier rejected the theory that the remains of the slain students from the rural teacher college in Ayotzinapa, who went missing in September 2014, were burned at the Cocula municipal dump in Guerrero state. The attorney general’s office said in a statement that specialists were already carrying out a new probe of the dump and that results would be delivered before March 31.
Israel
Anti-EU video condemned
The government has condemned a video by a group of settlers that depicts the EU ambassador wearing a Hannibal Lecter mask and accuses him of trying to establish a “terrorist state.” The video showing Lars Faaborg-Andersen as the psychopathic cannibal from the film The Silence of the Lambs was posted on Facebook by the “Jerusalem Periphery Forum” and said “Andersen must be restrained.” The forum advocates the ending of European housing aid to Palestinian and Bedouin encampments along Highway 1 between the settlement of Maale Adumim, north of Jerusalem, and the Dead Sea. Israel considers such EU-funded construction illegal.
‘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
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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in