AUSTRALIA
Anti-Trump motion passed
The New South Wales Legislative Council, the upper house of the state’s parliament, yesterday unanimously passed a motion that described US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump as “a revolting slug unfit for public office.” “This house ... agrees with those who have described Mr Trump as a ‘revolting slug’ unfit for public office,” the motion said. The house “condemns the misogynist, hateful comments” made by him about women and minorities, and those “that clearly describe sexual assault,” the motion said. No one objected to the motion, so it was recorded as having been unanimously agreed to by the Sydney-based house. Greens party lawmaker Jeremy Buckingham introduced the motion.
MYANMAR
Crackdown kills 26
Security forces have now killed at least 26 people in response to attacks on police that have sparked a dramatic escalation in violence in a Muslim-majority region along the border with Bangladesh, state media reports said. Military personnel and police reinforcements have poured into Maungdaw, Rakhine State, and have clashed with groups of up to 300 men, armed with pistols, swords and knives, the reports said. Human rights groups and advocates for the stateless Rohingya have voiced concern that the civilian population may be caught up in the authorities’ violent response. The killings bring the total death toll in northern Rakhine State since Sunday to 39, including 13 security personnel. The 26 alleged attackers reported killed include several who a local resident told reporters were shot while unarmed and fleeing soldiers.
BURUNDI
Vote to quit ICC passed
Lawmakers on Wednesday overwhelmingly voted in support of a plan to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC), something no nation has ever done. The decision escalates a bitter dispute with the international community over the human rights situation in the nation, which has seen more than a year of deadly violence after President Pierre Nkurunziza made a controversial decision to pursue a third term. Ninety-four out of 110 lawmakers voted in favor of the withdrawal plan. The decision, which was also unanimously adopted by the Senate, now needs the president’s approval.
PHILIPPINES
Death toll revised
Police have said nearly 2,300 people have died in President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs since July, down from an earlier estimate of 3,600, after investigations into the near-daily killings. “Not all [the deaths] are related to the war on drugs,” National Police spokesman Dionardo Carlos said late on Wednesday. He said that 1,566 drug suspects were killed in police operations and 722 deaths were still under investigation or had already been investigated.
CHINA
Trapped elephants rescued
Rescuers in Yunnan Province used a large excavator to break down a concrete wall and free three elephants stuck in a reservoir for more than two days, state media reported. The two adult elephants and calf were discovered on Sunday in the 5m deep reservoir by forest rangers, but heavy rains filled up the pool and delayed rescue efforts. The two adult elephants helped the calf keep afloat as the water levels rose, while rescuers provided the trio with food. Authorities believe the calf fell in to the reservoir and the two adults went in to help.
ITALY
Playwright Dario Fo dies
Nobel prize-winning playwright, director and political activist Dario Fo, an acclaimed satirist who poked a finger in the eye of the church and state, has died aged 90, officials said yesterday. Famous for his cutting political satire in plays such as The Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Fo won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1997. He remained a committed activist to the end, skewering the nation’s authorities with his sharp wit. He was admitted to hospital in Milan 12 days ago. “With Dario Fo, Italy loses one of the great protagonists of theater, culture and the civic life of our country,” said Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who was himself regularly ridiculed by the irreverent Fo.
UNITED STATES
Turkey frees US journalist
Turkish authorities have released US journalist Lindsey Snell detained for the past two months after she fled Syria claiming to have been kidnapped by militants, a senior US official said yesterday. Snell is returning to the US, the official said. She was arrested on Aug. 6 for “violating a military zone” after she returned from Syria, where she said she had been filming civilians affected by airstrikes. The Committee to Protect Journalists media freedom watchdog welcomed Snell’s release. On her return flight to New York on Wednesday, Snell said she was concerned about her husband Suliman Wardak, who was also arrested in Turkey after traveling there to help with her case, the Guardian reported.
ITALY
Human traffickers jailed
A judge sentenced three men to 20 years each in jail on Wednesday for their role in packing hundreds of refugees into a boat in which 49 suffocated in the Mediterranean in August last year, a legal source said. The judge in Catania, Sicily, found the three guilty of murder and facilitating illegal immigration, more than a year after rescuers recovered the victims from the hold of a fishing boat from which they also pulled 312 survivors.
ECUADOR
Assange rape case delayed
The government has delayed until Nov. 14 its questioning of Julian Assange in a Swedish rape investigation, at the Wikileaks founder’s request, the prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday. The questioning, originally scheduled for Monday, could help end a four-year-long deadlock since Assange took refuge in the nation’s London embassy. “He made the request in a document, via the Ecuadoran ambassador in the UK, in which he sets out his reasons pertaining to protection guarantees and self-defense,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement. Swedish chief prosecutor Ingrid Isgren and a police investigator will be allowed to be present to ask questions through the Ecuadoran prosecutor, who will later report the findings to Sweden, the European country’s prosecutors have previously said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Firm fined over Ford’s leg
A film production company was fined £1.6 million (US$1.95 million) on Wednesday over an accident on the set of Star Wars: The Force Awakens that broke the leg of movie star Harrison Ford. The actor was struck by a hydraulic door on the set of the Millennium Falcon at Pinewood Studios near London in June 2014. Prosecutors said Ford, who was 71 at the time, could have been killed by the door, which struck him with a force comparable to the weight of a small car.
‘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