JAPAN
Troops dig cars from snow
The Self-Defense Forces yesterday mobilized to help dig out more than 200 vehicles stuck in heavy snow in the west of the nation, officials said. Tottori Prefecture has seen heavy snowfall since Monday night with a record 1 meter accumulating in one town. Tottori Governor Shinji Hirai had requested the military aid early yesterday. “In addition to 28 personnel who arrived in the early morning, 33 more are on the way,” Daisuke Amano of the prefecture’s disaster prevention unit said. He said there were about 240 cars unable to move at 7:30am.
BANGLADESH
Trees to attract lightning
The government has begun planting 1 million palm trees nationwide to help prevent hundreds of people being killed by lightning strikes every year, a top official said yesterday. Authorities last year declared lightning a natural disaster as official tallies recorded more than 200 deaths last year, with 82 people dying on a single day in May. Experts say the real number was actually much higher, with one independent monitor saying 349 people were killed by lightning strikes last year.
CHINA
Japanese hotelier snubbed
The National Tourism Administration has urged tour operators to sever ties with a Japanese hotel chain amid an escalating row over the hotelier’s denial of the 1937 massacre by Japanese troops in Nanjing in 1937. A furore erupted this month over books by Toshio Motoya, president of Tokyo-based hotel and real-estate developer APA Group, that air his revisionist views and are placed in every room of the firm’s more than 400 hotels. Motoya, using the pen name Seiji Fuji, wrote that stories of the Nanjing Massacre were “impossible.”
INDONESIA
Weapons smuggling probed
Authorities are investigating allegations of weapons smuggling by dozens of its peacekeepers who were arrested in Sudan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. Sudanese media reported on Friday last week that the North Darfur State administration arrested Indonesian police officers who were suspected of trying to smuggle out 29 Kalashnikov rifles and about 70 guns in their luggage at El Fasher Airport. Ministry spokesman Armanatha Nasir said the initial information they received was that the luggage did not belong to the police unit and the UN is currently conducting an investigation. National Police spokesman Martinus Sitompul said the police officers are being held in a transit camp in Sudan. He insisted that the luggage that contained guns did not belong to the group, citing the chief of the police unit as saying it did not bear the identification stickers they use.
SOUTH KOREA
‘Pokemon Go’ released
Nintendo Co’s smash hit Pokemon Go was unleashed in the country yesterday, six months after it was released elsewhere in the world, a delay caused by security fears over Google Maps. “We have waited very long and worked very hard to launch ‘Pokemon Go’ in South Korea,” Pokemon Korea chief executiv Lim Jae-boem said. Pokemon Go relies on Google Maps to work, but in most of the country those functions have been limited by the government for national security reasons. Neither Niantic nor Pokemon Korea specified how they managed to work around the Google Maps challenge. “We used various publicly accessible data sources,” Niantic art director Dennis Hwang 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
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