PAKISTAN
Twenty killed at shrine
Twenty people were murdered and four wounded early yesterday at a Sufi shrine by men wielding batons and knives, police said. Four women were among those killed at the Shrine of Mohammad Ali in Punjab Province, according to police, who said they had arrested the shrine’s custodian and two other suspects. “The 50-year-old shrine custodian, Abdul Waheed, has confessed that he killed these people because he feared that they had come to kill him,” regional police chief Zulfiqar Hameed said. “The suspect appears to be paranoid and psychotic, or it could be related to rivalry for the control of shrine.”
PARAGUAY
Interior minister sacked
President Horacio Cartes on Saturday fired his interior minister and top police official following the killing of a young opposition party leader and violent overnight clashes sparked by a secret Senate vote for a constitutional amendment to allow presidential re-election. Dozens of people, including a police officer, were arrested on Friday evening in demonstrations that saw protesters break through police lines and enter the first floor of the national legislature, setting fire to papers and furniture. In the early hours of Saturday, 25-year-old Rodrigo Quintana was shot and killed at the headquarters of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party after riot police had stormed the building during the protests.
UNITED STATES
More trouble for Flynn
Former national security advisor Michael Flynn failed to disclose payments from a Russian television network and a second firm linked to Russia in a February financial disclosure form, according to documents released by the White House on Saturday. In a financial disclosure form signed by Flynn on March 31, the former White House official listed speaking engagements to Russian entities, including the Kremlin-funded RT TV and Volga-Dnepr Airlines. The speeches were not included in a form that Flynn signed electronically on Feb. 11, which the White House also released on Saturday.
IRAQ
IS deputy reported killed
Ayad al-Jumaili, believed to be a deputy of Islamic State (IS) group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed in an airstrike on Friday, an intelligence spokesman said on Saturday. Jumaili was reportedly killed with other IS commanders in a strike carried out by the air force in al-Qaim, near the border with Syria, a military intelligence spokesman said.
SOUTH KOREA
Cargo vessel missing
A cargo vessel is missing after making its last contact in the South Atlantic about 2,500km from shore and 22 crew members are unaccounted for, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and news reports said yesterday. Two Filipino crew members floating in a life raft were rescued on Saturday, but other lifeboats found in the area were empty, Yonhap news agency said. Eight of the missing are South Koreans and 14 are Filipinos, officials said.
INDONESIA
Rains halt landslide search
Incessant rains yesterday halted the search for at least two dozen people missing after a landslide swept into a village on Java. Chief of staff of the local army unit Lieutenant Colonel Jemz Ratu Edo said two bodies were discovered before the search was suspended. One body had been found on Saturday. Seventeen people were injured and being treated at a hospital, authorities said.
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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was