SYRIA
Turkey bombs Kurdish forces
Turkish warplanes yesterday conducted a barrage of airstrikes on Kurdish positions in the northeast of the country, leaving several fighters dead, Kurdish forces and a monitor said. The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) said the strikes hit their positions near the border town of al-Malikiyah at 2am. “Turkish planes carried out a broad offensive on a YPG base that houses media and communication centers and some military installations,” the YPG statement said. “The treacherous attack killed and wounded fighters,” it added, without giving a toll. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Turkey carried out “dozens of simultaneous airstrikes” on YPG positions in Hasakeh Province overnight, confirming that a media center was hit.
SWITZERLAND
UN hosts Yemen conference
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and senior government officials from dozens of countries yesterday met to drum up funds for war-torn Yemen, considered the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis. Guterres and top diplomats from Switzerland and Sweden cohosted the conference in Geneva, aimed at helping raise US$2.1 billion in a UN relief appeal. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said “an alarming 18.8 million people are in need of humanitarian or protection assistance” in Yemen. War in the country has killed more than 10,000 civilians and pushed the nation to the brink of famine.
KENYA
Bus, tanker crash killing 27
A crash on Monday between a passenger bus and a tanker ferrying cooking oil killed 27 people along the main highway connecting Nairobi and the port city of Mombasa, police said. The accident occurred in the Kibwezi area at about midnight as the bus driver was trying to overtake another vehicle, but collided with the oncoming truck, Kibwezi police chief Leonard Kimaiyo said. “Twenty adults and three children died on the spot, while one adult died later in hospital,” Kimaiyo said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Wiki to combat ‘fake’ news
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has launched a Web site aimed at countering the spread of fake news by bringing together professional journalists and a community of volunteers and supporters to produce news articles. The new platform, called Wikitribune, will be free to access and carry no advertising, Wales said. “The news is broken, but we’ve figured out how to fix it,” he said in a promotional video posted on the Web site’s homepage. Wales said that because people expected to get news for free on the Internet, news sites were reliant on advertising money, which created strong incentives to generate so-called “clickbait,” to attract viewers.
CHINA
West Bank work banned
Beijing is not allowing its construction crews to work in the West Bank because it opposes Israeli settlements in what it considers occupied Palestinian territory. Israel officials on Sunday said that they had signed a deal with the government to bring construction crews to Israel. They would not address reports that the work would be restricted to only some areas. A Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman on Monday confirmed the West Bank restrictions. Spokesman Geng Shuang (耿爽) said the government values its relationship with Israel, but “opposes the construction of Jewish settlements on Palestine’s occupied territory.”
‘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