INDIA
Helicopter crash kills seven
An air force Mi-17 helicopter yesterday crashed in the remote northeast bordering China, killing all seven crew members and passengers, an official said. The police control room said the crash occurred on a routine flight in the mountainous Tawang area in the state of Arunachal Pradesh. The wreckage of the helicopter has been sighted and the police and the army teams have rushed to the mountainous area, a Ministry of Defence official said. The cause of the accident was not immediately known. The air force helicopter took off from an army helipad in the area. The helicopter had both air force and army personnel on board, and it was carrying supplies for military posts close to the border with China, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to talk to reporters.
JAPAN
Man arrested for six deaths
A 32-year-old man was yesterday arrested on suspicion of stabbing his daughter to death and has admitted to deliberately torching the house in which his wife and four other children were found dead, police said. The man, Hirobumi Komatsu, told authorities he started the fire at the family’s home in Hitachi city, about 100km north of Tokyo, Deputy Police Chief Mitsuru Kaneko told reporters. Police discovered five bodies at the apartment after the blaze was extinguished early yesterday, he said. One girl was found in critical condition with stab wounds and later died in hospital. The children — a girl and four boys — were aged three to 11, while the sixth victim was their mother, police said, citing the suspect. “We first learned about the incident when the man showed up at the police station to report it,” Kaneko said. The father could also be facing arson charges, police said. The deaths of the five other victims are under investigation, senior police official Masataka Suzuki told reporters.
JAPAN
Bodies from collision found
The coast guard yesterday said it had discovered 11 bodies inside a Chinese fishing boat that capsized after a collision with a Hong Kong-flagged oil tanker off the nation’s western coast the previous day. “Our divers found a total of 11 bodies inside the ship,” a coast guard official told reporters. “We’re still searching for the one missing member.” Thursday’s collision occurred 400km north of the Oki Islands in the Sea of Japan. The Chinese vessel, the Lurong Yuanyu 378, had 16 crew members in total. Four have been rescued. The Hong Kong-flagged ship was identified as Brightoil Lucky, a tanker carrying 21 crew members. The tanker’s crew were believed to be safe. The government has deployed three patrol boats to search for the missing crew in response to a plea for help from the Chinese government.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was