CHINA
Boats collide; 17 missing
Seventeen people are missing after a Chinese fishing boat collided with a foreign cargo ship and sank in the East China Sea yesterday, the state-owned China News Service reported, citing the nation’s coastguard fleet. The fishing boat, Lu Rong Yu 58398, had 19 people on board when the incident happened at 3:40am, the report said, adding that two people had been rescued by passing fishing boats and a search-and-rescue operation was still under way. It did not specify where in the East China Sea the collision happened, or which country the foreign cargo ship belonged to. The East China Sea is home to the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), which are claimed by Taiwan, China and Japan — where they are known as the Senkakus. Previous incidents involving Chinese fishing boats and Japanese patrol ships have stoked diplomatic rows.
MYANMAR
Suu Kyi spurns ‘Rohingya’
Aung San Suu Kyi last week advised the US ambassador against using the term “Rohingya” to describe the persecuted Muslim population that has lived in Myanmar for generations. Her government — like the previous military-led government — does not call the Rohingya people by that name because it does not recognize them as citizens, her spokesman Kyaw Zay Ya said. “We won’t use the term Rohingya because Rohingya are not recognized as among the 135 official ethnic groups,” said Kyaw Zay Ya, who was at the meeting. “Our position is that using the controversial term does not support the national reconciliation process and solving problems.”
RUSSIA
Abe hails breakthrough
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday hailed a potential breakthrough in a decades-long territorial dispute with Russia after talks with President Vladimir Putin, Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs press secretary Yasuhisa Kawamura said. “The prime minister said that today he could feel a breakthrough, he could make a breakthrough in the currently stagnated negotiation.” Tokyo-Moscow relations are hamstrung by a row dating back to the end of World War II when Soviet troops seized the four southernmost islands in the Pacific Kuril chain, known as the Northern Territories in Japan. Japan and Russia’s lingering tensions have prevented them ever signing a peace treaty to formally end World War II hostilities, hindering trade and investment ties. Abe, in a rare visit by a G7 leader to Russia, met Putin for talks at his holiday residence in the Black Sea resort of Sochi with their talks focusing on the dispute.
INDIA
India rarely executes: study
The nation aggressively imposes death sentences, but hardly ever executes anyone, a new study conducted by the National Law University showed. The study, which is led by high-ranking judges and lawyers, found that 1,810 death sentences were issued between 2000 and 2014, but only four people have been executed. Among the prisoners interviewed for the study, the median wait for a ruling on their appeal was six-and-a-half years, with one prisoner waiting more than two decades to learn his fate. The study, which was made public on Friday, is the first major effort in India to interview a large group of death-row prisoners and evaluate their treatment. More than 95 percent of death sentences imposed since 2000 were overturned or commuted by higher courts, the study found.
UNITES STATES
Shooting spree kills three
A shooting spree that began with a domestic slaying outside a suburban Washington high school ended up provoking memories of the 2002 sniper attacks that left 10 dead. Three people were killed and three wounded in about 20 hours before police took Eulalio Tordil into custody on Friday afternoon. Tordil is a federal security officer who was suspended from duty after his estranged wife took out a protective order against him. Police said Tordil shot and killed his wife and wounded a bystander on Thursday afternoon in the parking lot of a high school. Detectives worked throughout the night, but could not track him down. On Friday, police said Tordil shot three people outside a mall, one of them fatally. Then, police said he killed a woman outside a supermarket.
MEXICO
Uber driver accused of rape
A driver for ride-hailing app Uber was detained in Mexico City after a female passenger accused him of raping her, a spokeswoman from the city’s prosecutor’s office said on Friday. The passenger said she was raped earlier this month after being picked up by the Uber driver in the upmarket Condesa neighborhood, said the spokeswoman, who declined to be identified. The driver was detained on Wednesday and is being held in a prison in Mexico City, the spokeswoman said. “We take accusations like this very seriously and thus have deactivated the platform of the driver,” Uber spokesman Luis de Uriarte, who is based in Mexico, said in a statement. He said that authorities had asked the company for information about a driver and a journey made by that driver.
EL SALVADOR
Police, gunmen arrested
Prosecutors on Friday announced that they have arrested five police officers, 16 gunmen and a police administrative employee for allegedly killing street gang member and others. There have long been reports of death squad-style killings in the nation, where street gangs have been battling police, boosting the country’s murder rate to 103 homicides for every 100,000 residents last year. Attorney General Douglas Melendez said the gang arrested this week appears to have been dedicated to crime in general, including murder for hire and robbery. Melendez said “an isolated group” of police officers appears to have cooperated with the gang since last year by providing information or vehicles to the killers. The group has been implicated in about 11 homicides.
SOUTH AFRICA
Zuma rules out selling SAA
President Jacob Zuma on Friday ruled out privatizing South African Airways (SAA), saying the government would never sell the money-losing national flag carrier. Many of the nation’s 300-odd state-owned companies, including SAA, are a drain on the government’s purse and a team commissioned by Zuma to review them has recommended that some companies should be sold. SAA has been surviving on state-guaranteed loans and asked the Treasury to extend more guarantees after it used up more than 85 percent of the 14.4 billion rand (US$965.50 million) in loans already guaranteed by January this year. Some opposition lawmakers have called for the airline to be privatized. “The government is very clear, we will never sell this company, no matter what other people say,” Zuma said at SAA’s offices in Kempton Park, near Johannesburg.
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