CHINA
Running track plants shut
Authorities have shut down nine factories and detained some executives after reports that toxic industrial waste was used to make running tracks widely used at schools, official media said yesterday. Smelly synthetic sports fields and athletics circuits, along with students falling sick from exposure to them, have regularly made headlines in recent years. Parents of pupils at an elite elementary school in Beijing protested this month, saying that their children experienced nose bleeds and allergic reactions after using running tracks. State broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) reported that companies had been producing running track materials from recycled industrial waste, such as automobile tyres and electrical wires, which were believed to contain toxic chemical substances and heavy metals.
NEW ZEALAND
Militancy promoter jailed
A man yesterday was sentenced to more than three years in prison for distributing Muslim militant videos in the first case of its type in the nation. After his sentencing, 26-year-old Imran Patel had to be dragged by security guards from an Auckland courtroom while he shouted “Allahu Akbar,” or “Allah is Great,” according to the New Zealand Herald. Patel had pleaded guilty to distributing objectionable material after sending out links to videos made by the Islamic State group depicting prisoners being shot and beheaded.
PAKISTAN
More migrant aid sought
Islamabad has called for more international support for the Afghan refugee population it is housing. There are 1.5 million registered Afghan refugees and about as many undocumented refugees, with growing insecurity in Afghanistan impeding voluntary return programs. The government receives US$5.2 per refugee per year in international aid to provide displaced people with healthcare and education and that is only for those who are registered. Minister for Border Areas Abdul Qadir Baloch on Wednesday said that over the past decade, international support has vanished.
PAKISTAN
Slain singer mourned
Thousands of mourners yesterday crowded the funeral procession of a beloved singer who was gunned down in Karachi on Wednesday. Amjad Sabri, 45, was one of South Asia’s most popular singers of the qawwali, Sufi devotional music that dates back more than 700 years. Devotees thronged the ambulance carrying Sabri’s body to the funeral, blocking its progress. A spokesman for a branch of the Pakistani Taliban, Qari Saifullah Saif, late on Wednesday claimed responsibility for the killing, saying it was in retaliation for a song that the hard-line group considers blasphemous.
AUSTRALIA
Father jailed for rape
A man who repeatedly raped his daughter and organized for strangers to abuse her while he watched was yesterday jailed for 22-and-a-half years. The father, who cannot be named in order to protect the girl’s identity, admitted 61 offenses between 2013 and last year, when his daughter was aged 11 to 13. The West Australian District Court in Perth heard that the 42-year-old also arranged for six other men, whom he met online, to have sex with her while he watched or participated. The court heard that after his arrest the father told police he had regrets about what he had done. “I really want to get out of this scene,” he said. “I’m going to be honest, it was fun while it lasted, but it went way over the line.”
FRANCE
Protest ban lifted
The government late on Wednesday backed down from its ban on a planned labor protest yesterday in Paris. However, authorities said that violence would not be tolerated. Acrimonious negotiations finally yielded a compromise by which the march would follow a short, tightly contained route proposed by the interior ministry. The marchers are to head from Place de la Bastille to the Seine, looping around the Arsenal Basin before returning to the square.
UNITED STATES
Former UN official dies
Former UN General Assembly president John Ashe of Antigua and Barbuda died on Wednesday as he was facing criminal charges in a bribery case. He was 61. Ashe died at his home in Dobbs Ferry, New York, Sergeant Vincent Ingani of the Dobbs Ferry Police Department said. He gave no other details. UN General Assembly President Mogens Lykketoft confirmed his death, saying Ashe died of a heart attack. Ashe was a former UN ambassador from Antigua and Barbuda who served in the largely ceremonial post of president of the 193-nation assembly from September 2013 to September 2014. He was accused last year by US federal authorities of turning the position into a “platform for profit” by accepting more than US$1 million in bribes.
SWITZERLAND
Solar plane lands in Spain
The Solar Impulse 2 has completed a three-day flight across the Atlantic in the latest leg of its globe-circling voyage. The Aero-Club of Switzerland said the aircraft landed in Seville, Spain, at 5:40am GMT yesterday, ending a 70-hour flight that began from New York City on Monday. It was the 15th leg of a planned around-the-world flight that began in March last year from Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.
MEXICO
Study tracks opium fields
The government and the UN on Wednesday announced the results of a new study that said opium poppies were planted on about 24,800 hectares between 2014 and last year. The study is the first of its kind in the nation, so authorities cannot compare the results with past years to determine whether opium growing has expanded. The head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Mexico, Antonio Mazzitelli, said a second part of the study will try to estimate what the crop yield is. Mazzitelli said production is concentrated in nine states along the nation’s Pacific coast, including Guerrero, Sinaloa and Nayarit. The government said it had destroyed about the same area of poppy plantations in the same period, but it was unclear if that corresponded to the area mentioned in the study.
CANADA
Project trimmed over frog
The government on Wednesday issued an emergency decree scaling back the construction of a housing development outside Montreal to protect the habitat of a rare and endangered frog. Environment Minister Catherine McKenna announced the move, which aims to preserve 2km2 that is the habitat for the Western Chorus Frog, a 2.5cm brown-olive green amphibian listed three years ago by the federal government as being at risk. “This is only the second emergency decree adopted for a species at risk in Canada and the first applicable to private land — a historic first for the protection of an endangered species,” Nature Quebec president Michel Belanger said.
‘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