EAST TIMOR
Main party loses votes
Preliminary results from East Timor’s parliamentary election show the largest party in the national unity government has lost support and the leftist Fretilin emerging as the biggest beneficiary, but neither winning enough votes to govern alone. With 78 percent of votes counted by midday yesterday, the National Congress for Timorese Reconstruction party of independence hero Xanana Gusmao had won 27.6 percent, down from 36.7 percent in 2012. Its coalition partner Fretilin, or Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor, was up slightly at 31 percent. The Popular Liberation Party, a new political force led by former president Taur Matan Ruak, had scooped up about 9 percent of votes. The Democratic Party was winning 10 percent.
JAPAN
Deposits found at Fukushima
Images captured on Friday by an underwater robot showed massive deposits believed to be melted nuclear fuel covering the floor of a damaged reactor at Japan’s crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant. The robot spotted suspected debris of melted fuel for the first time since the 2011 earthquake and tsunami caused multiple meltdowns. Cameras mounted on the robot showed extensive damage caused by the core meltdown, with fuel debris mixed with broken reactor parts, suggesting the difficult challenges ahead in the decades-long decommissioning of the destroyed plant.
AFGHANISTAN
Police killed in Taliban fight
A government official says Taliban fighters overran a district headquarters after a ferocious fight that left two police dead in northern Faryab Province. Provincial police chief spokesman Abdul Karim Yourish yesterday said the assault on the Lawlash District government headquarters was launched under the cover of darkness late on Saturday. Taliban have launched dozens of attacks in northern Afghanistan this week, temporarily closing a key highway between Kabul and the north.
NEW ZEALAND
People return amid warnings
Residents in the two largest cities on South Island yesterday began returning to their homes despite states of emergency still in place after a severe storm caused flooding and forced hundreds of homes to be evacuated. MetService meteorologist Angus Hines said the system had passed, but other storms “were lining up to bring more rain.” Christchurch was mopping up after the Heathcote River burst its banks and flooded southern parts of the city on Saturday, causing evacuations in lower-lying areas, authorities said.
INDONESIA
Shoot drug dealers: Widodo
President Joko Widodo has ordered the police to shoot drug traffickers who resist arrest in the latest effort to eradicate drug use. In a speech to a political parties late on Friday, Widodo urged law enforcers to crack down on drug dealers. “Be firm. Especially to foreign drug dealers who enter the country. If they resist even the slightest, just shoot them,” he said. The Narcotics Agency recorded there are 6 million drug users in the archipelago out of its 255 million people, a situation the president labeled a “drug emergency.” Widodo’s remarks prompted criticism from human rights activists. Andreas Harsono, the nation’s researcher from Human Rights Watch, condemned the order. “A president statement like that can seem like a green light to shoot without the correct procedure,” Harsono said.
FRANCE
Macron’s support down: poll
A IFOP poll published in the Journal du Dimanche weekly yesterday showed the popularity rating of President Emmanuel Macron has slumped 10 points to hit 54 percent over the past month. He was widely criticized by opponents and the press as heavy-handed after a row over budget cuts that ended with the resignation of a highly regarded military chief. The 39-year-old leader has also backed a controversial bill to toughen France’s security laws that includes measures some rights groups have branded as draconian. His majority in parliament has also drawn concern over the concentration of power in the presidency.
IRAN
Tehran demands US release
Tehran has demanded that the US release all detained Iranian citizens, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Saturday. The report quotes Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi as saying he raised the issue on Friday during a meeting with a US delegation in Vienna, on the sidelines of a meeting on a 2015 nuclear deal. “We raised the issue of the release of Iranians who are detained under the meaningless accusation of bypassing sanctions,” on Iran, Araghchi was quoted as saying. Earlier on Friday the White House threatened “new and serious consequences” for Iran unless it releases all US citizens who are detained there.
MEXICO
Former governor probed
A former state governor from the ruling party is to stand trial for engaging in organized crime and handling funds of illicit origin after a judge reviewing evidence approved the case, the attorney general’s office said on Saturday. Javier Duarte, who until last year governed the Gulf coast state of Veracruz for President Enrique Pena Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, has been accused by the opposition of siphoning off millions of dollars during his six-year tenure. On Monday last week, Duarte was extradited to Mexico from Guatemala, where he was captured in April after spending months on the run. After presenting 82 pieces of evidence in hearings on Saturday, the attorney general’s office said in a statement that the judge gave prosecutors six months to proceed against Duarte.
VENEZUELA
Fresh 48-hour strike called
The nation’s opposition on Saturday called a fresh 48-hour general strike against embattled President Nicolas Maduro’s plans to have the constitution rewritten giving him broader powers. “We are calling out the entire people, all groups in society, for a 48-hour strike” on Wednesday and Thursday, lawmaker Simon Calzadilla said. Calzadilla said that the strike would be capped on Friday with a march demanding that Maduro officially scrap his planned constituent assembly vote.
SWITZERLAND
Couple finally laid to rest
The remains of a couple, found on a receding glacier in the Alps 75 years after they had disappeared, were at long last buried on Saturday near their native village. Their two surviving daughters were present at the funeral service in the church at Saviese in Valais canton, a few kilometers from Chandolin, where Marcelin Dumoulin and his wife, Francine, were living when they disappeared on Aug. 15, 1942. “Of course it is a relief to have found them, but it brings back memories because a tragedy like that, one doesn’t forget,” Monique Gautschy, one of the surviving children who was 11 at the time, told reporters by telephone.
‘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