CHINA
Internet governance urged
Facebook founder and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg held a rare meeting on Saturday with China’s propaganda chief, at a time when Chinese authorities are tightening control over their cyberspace. Politburo Standing Committee member Liu Yunshan (劉雲山) told Zuckerberg that he hopes Facebook can share its experience with Chinese companies to help “Internet development better benefit the people of all countries,” the official Xinhua news agency reported. Zuckerberg was in Beijing to attend an economic forum. China has called for the creation of a global Internet “governance system” and cooperation between countries to regulate Internet use, stepping up efforts to promote controls that activists complain stifle free expression. Facebook and other Western social media Web sites including Twitter are banned in China. Zuckerberg has long been courting China’s leaders in a so far futile attempt to access the country with the world’s largest number of Internet users — 668 million as of last year.
GREECE
Two refugees found dead
Two refugees were yesterday found dead on a boat that arrived on the island of Lesbos on the first day of the implementation of an agreement between the EU and Turkey on handling new refugee arrivals. Medical personnel performed CPR on the two men, but failed to revive them. The overcrowded boat was carrying dozens of refugees from nearby Turkey yesterday, the first day for the implementation of a refugee agreement between the EU and Turkey. It stipulates how the new arrivals from Turkey are to be processed and returned. About 2,500 refugees currently on Lesbos and other islands are being taken to mainland Greece where they are placed in shelters before EU-wide relocation.
SPAIN
Bus crash claims 14 lives
Fourteen people were killed and 43 injured yesterday when a bus carrying foreign students crashed, regional authorities in Catalonia said. The students were enrolled at Barcelona University as part of the European Erasmus exchange program, said Jordi Jane, who heads interior matters for the Catalonia region, adding the nationalities had not yet been established. The accident occurred just before 6am near the small town of Freginals, about 150km south of Barcelona, as the bus was returning from a traditional festival in Valencia. The driver “hit the railing on the right and swerved to the left so violently that the bus veered onto the other side of the highway,” Jane said. The bus then hit a car coming in the opposite direction, injuring two people inside, he added.
ISRAEL
Arson attack suspected
Police yesterday said that a Palestinian home had been set on fire near the site of an arson attack that killed three Palestinians last year. Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said the suspected arson attack took place earlier yesterday in the West Bank village of Duma. Palestinian officials said attackers broke Ibrahim Dawabsheh’s bedroom window and set his house on fire. Dawabsheh is a relative of last year’s victims and a key witness to the attack. He is testifying before an Israeli court in the suspected perpetrators’ trial. He was unharmed, but his wife suffered from smoke inhalation. In July last year, suspected Jewish settlers hurled firebombs into a home, killing 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh. His mother, Riham, and father, Saad, later died of their wounds. Ali’s four-year-old brother Ahmad survived.
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
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