VANUATU
Volcano forces 7,000 to flee
A rumbling, belching volcano that is threatening to blow had forced more than 7,000 people to flee their homes as of yesterday. Authorities have declared an emergency on Ambae Island, where activity at the Monaro volcano has increased recently, raising fears of a major eruption. About 10,000 people live on the island and villagers close to the volcano have been moved to schools and community halls on the island’s less vulnerable eastern and western regions. A ship arrived yesterday carrying food, water and other essential supplies, National Disaster Management Office Director Shadrack Welegtabit said, adding that a second ship was due tomorrow.
PAKISTAN
Minister charged with graft
Minister of Finance Ishaq Daq was yesterday indicted on graft charges after investigators found his assets did not match his reported income. State media report said Dar was present in the courtroom when a judge read the charges against him. Dar denied the allegations. Under the law, Dar can continue to work as a minister until he is found guilty. However, opposition leaders have asked him to resign on moral grounds. Dar has close familial ties to former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who was disqualified from holding office by the Supreme Court for concealing his financial assets in July.
INDIA
Darjeeling strike ends
A strike that shut down the picturesque hill station of Darjeeling — causing violence and disruption to tourism and tea production — was yesterday called off after 104 days, protesters said. The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM), a movement demanding the formation of a separate state for ethnic Gorkhas in West Bengal, said it would enter into talks with the government. “After the union home minister Rajnath Singh’s appeal, we had a discussion with senior leaders and decided to withdraw the indefinite strike from Wednesday,” GJM’s Jyoti Rai said. “We are going for talks because of the sacrifices of people in the hills and will wait for the outcome.” Clashes between protesters and police, as well as arson attacks, have rattled the town for months, causing schools and shops to close and thousands of mostly Indian tourists to flee the popular destination. The unrest was triggered by the state government’s announcement the previous month that it was making Bengali mandatory in local schools, angering West Bengal’s Gorkha population, who speak Nepali.
MALAYSIA
Man cited for wearing shorts
A man has been reprimanded by Islamic authorities in the state of Kelantan for “indecent dressing” after he was caught wearing shorts in public on the way to a soccer match, officials and reports said yesterday. Wan Khairul Hayyee Wali had stopped off to buy a burger from a street-side stall in Kota Baru as he drove on Monday to play futsal. Religious enforcement officers spotted the 30-year-old and handed him a notice saying that he had breached Islamic regulations dictating that Muslims should not wear revealing attire. “It came as a shock to me when a religious department enforcement officer gave me a notice saying I have flouted the Shariah Criminal Enactment for exposing my knees,” he was quoted as saying by the Star newspaper. Kelantan state religious enforcement unit deputy director Mohamad Fadzuli Mohamad Zain said 11 people, including Khairul, were given summonses for indecent dressing.” Khairul had been ordered to attend a counseling session and would have to pay a fine of 1,000 ringgit (US$240) if he failed to turn up, Fadzuli said.
UNITED STATES
Trump misfires on launch
When President Donald Trump on Saturday tweeted that Iran had “just test-fired” a missile, he seemed to know something the rest of the government did not. Turns out, he did not. There was no Iranian ballistic missile launch, three officials said on Tuesday. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had used a military parade on Friday last week to display its Khorramshahr medium-range ballistic missile, which is capable of reaching Israel and much of the Middle East. That same day, video of the test firing of a Khorramshahr aired on Iranian state TV. The time or location of the test was not mentioned in the report, and it appears that the video footage was from a failed Iranian missile test earlier this year.
UNITED STATES
Highway paint stains cars
New yellow painted highway lines in the Alaskan Panhandle city of Ketchikan are crooked and the paint that has been used by state transportation officials has stained cars, officials said. The problems emerged after the state Department of Transportation tried out a new line painting system on the Tongass Highway, the Ketchikan Daily News reported on Saturday. Department spokeswoman Meadow Bailey said the paint is “not drying as quickly as it should due to humidity in southeast Alaska.” Bailey said the state will not repaint the yellow lines.
UAE
Matthew pleads not guilty
The British editor-at-large of an English-language newspaper in Dubai has pleaded not guilty to a premeditated murder charge over his wife’s killing. Gulf News editor Francis Matthew is accused of killing his 62-year-old wife, Jane, with a hammer after an argument. On July 3, Dubai police said they were called to Matthew’s home, where they found his wife dead. Police said Matthew initially said his wife had been assaulted by robbers, but later confessed to the slaying.
UNITED STATES
Guggenheim withholds art
The Guggenheim Museum in New York has decided to withdraw three works from a hotly anticipated exhibition on modern China after receiving “repeated threats of violence” related to the staging of live animals. Among the works in the exhibit “Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World,” scheduled to open on Oct. 6, were three involving animals. A central work that is not to go on display is Theater of the World, an octagonal installation inhabited by hundreds of reptiles and insects. The museum is also to exclude the video Dogs That Cannot Touch Each Other by Chinese artists Sun Yuan (孫源) and Peng Yu (彭禹). A Case Study of Transference by Chinese artist Xu Bing (徐冰), which shows two pigs mating, is also to be omitted from the show. A petition launched on the Change.org Web site garnered nearly 700,000 signatures in a bid to send the message that “animal cruelty holds no place in art in the United States.”
MEXICO
Gunmen kill at least 14
At least 14 people were killed and eight injured in a northern area on Tuesday night when an armed group opened fire in a drug addiction rehabilitation center, local police said. In a statement, security officials in the city of Chihuahua said “an armed group entered the Uniting Families rehabilitation center,” attacking those inside with assault rifles. First responders arrived on scene to care for the wounded in the center, where about 25 people were estimated to have been during the attack.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of