IRAQ
Bombs hit Baghdad
Two bombs exploded at a busy market in central Baghdad yesterday, killing at least 25 people and wounding more than 50, police and medics said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the Islamic State group regularly attacks civilians in the city. Police said the blasts went off near car parts shops in the Sinak neighborhood during the morning rush hour. One of them was triggered by a suicide bomber, the other was a planted explosive, a Ministry of the Interior official told reporters. Civilians picked through the debris of the explosions including a food cart torn apart by the blast as medics carried off the casualties. The Islamic State has lost much of the northern and western territory it seized in 2014 and is now resisting an Iraqi offensive on the northern city of Mosul, the ultra-hardline group’s last major stronghold in the country.
CHINA
Ying Kou chairman jailed
The chairman of Ying Kou Port Group was sentenced to 14 years in prison for accepting about 26.8 million yuan (US$3.83 million) in bribes, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. Since 2002, Gao Baoyu (高寶玉), who was also the Communist Party’s secretary of Ying Kou, abused his position by accepting bribes for appointments, the agency said. The verdict, handed down by a court in the northern city of Anshan, was not appealed. Ying Kou and Gao could not be immediately reached for comment. On Friday, the state prosecutor formally charged former Taiwan Affairs Office deputy director Gong Qinggai (龔清概) with bribery and abuse of power, setting the stage for his trial.
CHINA
CCTV to extend global reach
China Central Television (CCTV), Beijing’s largest and most important TV network, said it would launch a new global media platform at the stroke of New Year’s Day to help re-brand the nation overseas. The new multilingual media cluster is to have six TV channels, a video newsletter agency and a new media agency and will see the original CCTV News channel renamed as China Global Television Network, the network said on its Web site on Friday night. China has been extending its global influence with “soft power” tactics such as launching new English-language media and auditioning international public relations firms to tailor its branding strategy. President Xi Jinping (習近平) in February said that state media must tell the nation’s story to the world better and become internationally influential, adding that onshore portals must follow the party line and promote “positive propaganda as the main theme.”
CZECH REPUBLIC
Aircraft lands after threat
A Boeing 707 operated by a Polish charter airline on Friday made an emergency landing in Prague after a bomb threat by a passenger who was then detained by police, officials said. “A man who threatened to detonate a booby trap... is in the hands of the Czech police,” Minister of the Interior Milan Chovanec told a Czech TV station. “The man was Polish, just like most passengers,” he added but declined to say whether the police had actually found a bomb. Richard Klima, spokesman for Prague’s air traffic controllers, told reporters that the Enter Air plane flying from Las Palmas, Spain to Warsaw landed in Prague following the pilot’s request. Chovanec said about 160 passengers were evacuated from the aircraft that had landed at a disused old airport next to Prague’s Vaclav Havel Airport, and that the situation was safe.
‘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