INDIA
Bus crash kills at least 22
A bus slammed head-on into a truck in northern India early yesterday, killing 22 people and injuring more than a dozen, police said. The bus was carrying 37 passengers when it collided with the truck and caught fire near the city of Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh state, said Santosh Yadav, a police officer. Twenty-two bus passengers were killed and 15 others were injured in the accident, which took place at around 1:30am, he said. The bus driver and conductor escaped with only minor scratches, while the driver of the truck was not injured. The bodies of all 22 victims were charred badly and could not be immediately identified, Yadav said. The bus was heading from Gonda, a small district town in Uttar Pradesh, to New Delhi, India’s capital. Yadav said the bus’s fuel tank exploded and caught fire after the collision, trapping the passengers inside.
SOUTH KOREA
Four N Koreans may return
Authorities are questioning four North Koreans rescued from waters off the east coast and would return them to the North if they want to go back, the Ministry of Unification said yesterday. Koreans from the reclusive and impoverished North have occasionally defected to the rich, democratic South by fishing boat, crossing the disputed maritime border between the two sides, but most defections are via China. The four North Koreans were found on two vessels on Friday and Saturday by the South Korean navy, the ministry said. “They are currently under investigation and will be asked whether they want to go back to the North,” Unification Ministry spokesman Lee Duk-haeng told reporters. The rescue comes days after South Korea returned six North Korean fishermen rescued from straying fishing boats.
CHINA
Blast hits chemical plant
An explosion yesterday rocked a petrochemical plant in Shandong Province, with one person killed and seven missing, the Xinhua news agency reported. The blast happened about one hour after midnight and triggered fires at the loading area of Linyi Jinyu Petrochemical Co Ltd in the Linyi Lingang Economic Development Zone, it said. Six people were injured and the fire was being brought under control, Xinhua said. The “responsible person” at the company which runs the plant had been detained, the news agency said, without giving details. Deadly accidents are relatively common at industrial plants in the nation. Huge chemical explosions in the port city of Tianjin in 2015 killed more than 170 people. President Xi Jinping (習近平) vowed after the Tianjin blasts that the authorities should learn the lessons paid for in blood.
INDIA
Satellite to be launched
The nation was scheduled to launch a communication satellite yesterday using its most powerful rocket, in a further advance of its space program aimed at winning a bigger share of the US$300 billion global space industry. The rocket, named Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III, was to lift off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in southern India at 5.28pm, the Indian Space Research Organisation said on its Web site. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has been promoting the home-grown space program as a demonstration of low-cost technology and in February it launched 104 satellites in a single mission, most of them for foreign customers. At 3.136 tonnnes, the GSAT-19 satellite would be the heaviest India has attempted to put in orbit, the space agency said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing