SPAIN
Thousands protest bullfights
Thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Madrid to demand an end to the centuries-old tradition of bullfighting. The protest came after the anti-bullfighting lobby managed to obtain a ban on a famous festival that ends with a bull being speared to death. The regional government of Castilla y Leon in June banned the killing of bulls at town festivals, in a move that targeted the northern region’s controversial Toro de la Vega festival, where horsemen chase a bull and spear it in front of onlookers. The protesters held up banners saying: “Bullfighting, the school of cruelty” and “Bullfighting, a national shame.” A spokesman for the Party Against the Ill-Treatment of Animals said it was “time to end bullfighting and all other bloody spectacles.” “Bulls feel and they suffer,” said Chelo Martin Pozo, a 39-year-old from Seville who took part in the rally. “Bullfights are a national shame and if they represent me, then I am not Spanish.”
UNITED STATES
Deck collapse injures 30
Police say 30 people have been hurt after a deck collapsed at an off-campus party at a house near Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. No major injuries were reported. Hartford Deputy Chief Brian Foley said police received numerous calls at about 11:13pm on Saturday of multiple people hurt. He says a third-floor deck of a house collapsed onto a second-floor deck, which then fell onto a first-floor deck. Foley says the injured were sent to area hospitals, but that the most serious injury was a broken arm. The building is owned, but not run by Trinity.
CANADA
Heat kills dogs at daycare
Fourteen dogs on Saturday died in pet daycare and boarding facility after a mechanical malfunction caused heat to continuously enter their kennels, Playful Paws Pet Center in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, said. A “travesty of life” happened, and its staff are reaching out to the dogs’ owners, it said on Facebook. “We love our dogs and each of our team is trying to personally cope with this terrible loss.” It is not clear how long the heat was on before the dogs died or whether the center would compensate the owners.
UNITED STATES
Naked bike ride held
Thousands of bicyclists dared to be bare for Philadelphia’s annual nude ride promoting positive body image, cycling advocacy and fuel conservation. About 3,000 people on Saturday gathered for the eighth annual Philly Naked Bike Ride, setting off from a park near the Philadelphia Museum of Art and peddling past such popular spots as Independence Hall and Rittenhouse Square. The ride featured people sporting underwear, body paint, glitter or nothing at all. Some riders concerned about being recognized by their parents or coworkers wore masks. “It’s a really open and fun way of destigmatizing nudity,” said Oren Eisenberg, who was riding nude for the fifth time.
BELARUS
Vote for parliament opens
Voters went to the polls yesterday to choose a new parliament, selecting from 448 candidates for the 110 lower-house seats that were being contested. Critics say that tight restrictions on campaigning and state control of the news media inhibit a genuinely free election. About 25 percent of the electorate have cast ballots early, according to the Central Election Commission, despite concerns that early balloting could be a mechanism for state manipulation of the results.
MALAYSIA
Trawler crew kidnapped
Three crew members on a fishing trawler have been kidnapped in waters where militants from the Abu Sayyaf group have previously taken hostages, a security official said yesterday. The incident is believed to have occurred late on Saturday off Pom Pom Island, a popular scuba diving location in the eastern state of Sabah. “The boat is Malaysian registered,” said Wan Abdul Bari Abdul Khalid, head of Malaysia’s Eastern Sabah Security Command, without specifying the nationality of the crew. Authorities did not comment on whether they believed Abu Sayyaf was involved. In May, Abu Sayyaf released 14 Indonesian sailors who had been kidnapped in two high-seas raids, attacks that prompted Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines to launch joint patrols. In July, police said five Malaysian tugboat crew were abducted by Abu Sayyaf off the coast of Sabah.
BANGLADESH
Police raid militant hideout
A suspected militant believed by police to have been among the planners of a July cafe attack that killed 22 people killed himself during a police raid on a hideout in the capital, police said yesterday. The July attack in Dhaka’s diplomatic quarter was claimed by the Islamic State group and was one of the most brazen in Bangladesh, hit by a spate of killings of liberals and members of religious minorities in the past year. The government has pinned the blame on domestic militant groups, but security experts say the scale and sophistication of the incident suggest links to a trans-national Muslim network. National police chief Shahidul Hoque said the dead man, identified as Abdul Karim, was suspected to be one of the planners of the cafe attack, and to have rented a flat for the militants who carried it out. “He killed himself inside the flat so that we cannot collect information from him through interrogation,” said Sanwar Hossain, another official.
NORTH KOREA
Severe flooding reported
Floods have damaged tens of thousands of buildings in the country’s northeast after the worst downpour there for decades, state media said yesterday, urging all soldiers and civilians to join a drive to help victims. The report on the official KCNA news agency gave no death toll or exact figure for damage. A UN report last week, citing Pyongyang government data, said 60 people had been killed and more than 44,000 were homeless along the Tumen River, which partially marks the border with China and Russia. Yesterday report, citing the central committee of the ruling Workers’ Party, said “tens of thousands” of homes and public buildings had collapsed and railways, roads, power supplies, factories and farmland had been destroyed or submerged. People in North Hamgyong Province were suffering “great hardship,” it added.
CHINA
Naval drills set to begin
Beijing and Moscow will hold eight days of naval drills in the South China Sea off southern China’s Guangdong province starting today, the navy said. The exercises come at a time of heightened tension in the contested waters after an arbitration court in The Hague ruled in July that China did not have historic rights to the South China Sea and criticized its environmental destruction there. China rejected the ruling and refused to participate in the case. The “Joint Sea-2016” exercise will feature surface ships, submarines, fixed-wing aircraft, ship-borne helicopters and marines, the Chinese navy said in a statement yesterday.
‘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