CHINA
Explosion kills two
A massive explosion hit a food shop in the country’s east during the breakfast rush yesterday, killing two people and injuring 55. Security camera footage from the shop in the eastern resort city of Hangzhou showed the blast flinging dust and debris across a major road traversed by cars, buses, bicycles and scooters. Footage from state broadcaster China Central Television showed charred shop fronts facing the street in the residential area. Most such small establishments use bottled gas to fuel their cookers.
TURKEY
Government denies leak
The spokesman for the president said the government had no role in the publication by the state-run news agency of a map showing US military posts in Syria. The US military said it had raised concerns with Ankara after Anadolu Agency published a map showing 10 locations where it said US troops are located. The posts span a stretch of northern Syria controlled by Syrian Kurdish forces that the US supports, but that Turkey considers a terrorist group. Spokesman Ibrahim Kalin on Thursday said the news article that contained the map was based on the agency’s “own news-gathering network,” adding that the government had not given “the information or directed the agency.”
MALAYSIA
‘Despacito’ banned
The government has banned the catchy summer dance song Despacito from state radio and television broadcasts after critics in the Muslim-majority country complained the lyrics were obscene. The ban was on Wednesday announced on the government’s Radio Televisyen Malaysia by Salleh Said Keruak, the communications and multimedia minister, but the song can still be played on private stations and online platforms.
ZIMBABWE
Hunter kills Cecil’s cub
A trophy hunter has shot dead a cub of Cecil the lion, whose death in 2015 caused worldwide outrage, researchers tracking the pride confirmed yesterday. Xanda, a six-year-old lion fitted with a radio collar, was killed on July 7 in northwest Zimbabwe, close to where US dentist Walter Palmer shot Cecil with a high-powered bow and arrow two years ago. “Xanda was shot by a trophy hunter on a legally sanctioned hunt in a hunting area outside Hwange National Park,” Andrew Loveridge from Oxford University’s zoology department said. “As researchers we are saddened to lose a well-known study animal we have monitored since birth.” Both Cecil and Xanda wore electronic GPS tracking collars in a project run by Oxford University’s wildlife conservation research unit, but they had strayed out of the park boundaries and into a legal hunting area.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
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
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of