SOMALIA
Bombing kills at least six
A suspected car bomb yesterday exploded outside a government office in Mogadishu, killing at least six people, leveling buildings and leaving an unknown number wounded, police said. “The blast was huge and the initial information we are getting indicates it was a car loaded with explosives that targeted the Hodan district headquarters,” police officer Ibrahim Mohamed said. A vehicle had rammed a security checkpoint then exploded, he said. Images from the scene showed collapsed buildings — including a mosque — with rescue workers and civilians picking through the debris.
JAPAN
‘Twitter killer’ indicted
Takahiro Shiraishi, the so-called “Twitter killer” suspected of murdering and chopping up people he lured on social media, and storing their body parts in cooler boxes, was yesterday charged with nine counts of murder. Shiraishi, 27, has admitted to killing and butchering nine people, all but one of whom were women aged between 15 and 26. A police search of his apartment on Oct. 31 last year found nine dismembered bodies with as many as 240 bone parts stashed in coolers and tool boxes, sprinkled with cat litter in a bid to hide the evidence. Prosecutors pressed charges after five months of psychiatric examination showed Shiraishi could be held criminally responsible, the Jiji Press agency said.
INDIA
Fuel protests shut cities
Nationwide protests organized by opposition parties against record high gasoline and diesel prices yesterday shut down businesses, government offices and schools in many parts of the nation, and in some places protesters blocked trains and roads and vandalized vehicles. The protests turned violent in some states. Television images showed protesters breaking car and bus windows in the Patna, the state capital of the northern state of Bihar, and protesters blocked roads with burning tires there and elsewhere, including in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat. “The Modi ‘govt’ is stealing from the people of India with excessive taxes on fuel,” the main opposition Congress party said on Twitter, posting graphics on many how prices of many commodities have risen under Modi.
BANGLADESH
Protest for Zia’s release
Thousands of opposition supporters yesterday staged protests nationwide calling for the immediate release of their leader and three-time former prime minister, Khaleda Zia, jailed early this year for graft. Zia, 73, is currently on trial in Dhaka on more corruption charges. A police official said about 4,000 members of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party joined protests outside the National Press Club in Dhaka, but opposition spokesman Fakhrul Islam said there were about 20,000 people.
SUDAN
Trafficking victims rescued
Police have rescued 94 victims of human trafficking, including 85 minors, from open-air goldmines near Khartoum and the city’s international airport, among other places. Interpol, which coordinated the Aug. 26 to Aug. 30 operation, yesterday said that so far 14 people, 12 of them women, have been arrested. The rescued victims came from a half-dozen countries, including Chad, Eritrea, Niger and South Sudan, underscoring the transnational aspect of human trafficking, Interpol said. Operation Sawiyan involved 200 officers, while it provided training and equipment, it said.
TURKEY
More detained for Gulen ties
Authorities yesterday detained 51 soldiers and nine others over alleged links to US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara says orchestrated the failed coup in 2016 against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Istanbul police said. Those detained were among 89 suspects whose detention was ordered in an investigation launched by Istanbul prosecutors and spread over nine provinces, it said. Separately, Ankara prosecutors issued detention warrants for 13 senior officers, all with the rank of major and three of whom are on active duty, the Hurriyet newspaper said.
GERMANY
Crowd protests man’s death
About 2,500 people on Sunday marched in a far-right demonstration in Koethen after a man died following a fight with two Afghans, as officials pleaded for calm to avoid the anti-foreigner unrest that has shaken Chemnitz. Police and prosecutors said the 22-year-old deceased suffered acute heart failure after coming to blows with the suspects during a dispute on a playground on Saturday. The man’s death was “not directly” linked to the injuries sustained, authorities said in a statement. Reports said that he died in hospital and that he had a pre-existing heart condition. Prosecutors said that one Afghan suspect, 18, is accused of causing grievous bodily harm and that the other, 20, is charged with causing bodily harm with fatal consequences.
COLOMBIA
ELN refuses to restart talks
The National Liberation Army (ELN) yesterday said that conditions set by President Ivan Duque to restart peace talks in Havana aimed at ending its insurgency are “unacceptable.” Right-winger Duque gave the Marxist ELN a one-month deadline after his inauguration on Aug. 7 to convince him that the group is serious about laying down arms and re-entering civilian life. That cut-off point expired on Friday last week. By refusing to recognize agreements reached under Duque’s predecessor, former president Juan Manuel Santos, “and unilaterally placing unacceptable conditions, this government is ... ending the process of dialogue” aimed at reaching a peace agreement, ELN negotiators in Havana said in a statement.
UNITED STATES
Officer arrested for killing
A Dallas police officer who says she mistook her black neighbor’s apartment for her own when she fatally shot him has been arrested on a manslaughter charge. Officer Amber Guyger was off duty on Thursday last week and returning to South Side Flats, where she and 26-year-old Botham Jean had apartments, when the shooting occurred. Many questions remain about what led Guyger, who has been an officer for four years, to shoot Jean. Lawyers for Jean’s family had been calling for Guyger’s arrest since the shooting, saying that her remaining free days later showed that she was getting favorable treatment. She was arrested on Sunday and later released on bond.
UNITED STATES
Dead chef wins two Emmys
Celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, who committed suicide in June at age 61, on Sunday posthumously earned a pair of Emmy Awards for his work on the popular CNN food-and-travel show he hosted, Parts Unknown. Bourdain was awarded one of the Emmys for outstanding writing of a nonfiction program for an episode of the series set in southern Italy that aired in November last year. He also shared a second Emmy for best informational series or special in his role as host and executive producer of Parts Unknown.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not