LIBYA
IS claims deadly attack
The Islamic State (IS) group on Saturday claimed responsibility for an attack on a town in the southern desert that killed nine people and in which several people were kidnapped, according to a resident. The militant group, which made its claim in a statement on its news agency Amaq, said 29 people had been either killed or wounded in Friday’s attack. A military source said the assailants had occupied a police station in the oasis town of Tazerbo, north of Kufra, until residents expelled them. A resident said nine people had been killed in all and 10 wounded.
UNITED KINGDOM
Director Nicolas Roeg dies
Nicolas Roeg, a director of provocative and otherworldly films who gave Mick Jagger and David Bowie enduring screen roles, has died. He was 90. The British director of Don’t Look Now and many other films died on Friday night, his son, Nicolas Roeg Jr, told the Britain’s Press Association. “He was a genuine dad,” he said on Saturday. “He just had his 90th birthday in August.” During the 1970s, Roeg sent Jenny Agutter and his son Luc Roeg on the Australian Outback odyssey Walkabout, and gave Jagger a big-screen role in the thriller Performance.
INDIA
Police face off with tribe
Police officers had a nervous long-distance face-off with the tribe that killed a US missionary, in their latest bid to locate his body on a remote island. The police team, which took a boat just off North Sentinel island on Saturday, spotted men from the Sentinelese tribe on the beach where John Allen Chau was last seen, the region’s police chief Dependra Pathak said. Using binoculars, officers — in a police boat about 400m from the shore — saw the men armed with bows and arrows, the weapons reportedly used by the isolated tribe to kill Chau as he shouted Christian phrases at them. “They stared at us and we were looking at them,” Pathak said. The boat withdrew to avoid any chance of a confrontation.
UNITED STATES
Deli owner thwarts robbery
A deli owner whipped out a machete and chased away a would-be robber who has been charged with holding up five New York businesses in the past two months. Ana Guevara told Newsday that she now realizes she and her husband could have been killed in the confrontation at Deli and Pupuseria in Huntington Station on Long Island on Wednesday. Manuel Guevara said suspect Carlos Garcia had a fake gun. The 35-year-old Garcia was charged on Thursday in robberies at two cellphone stores, two delis and a laundromat. A suspected getaway driver, 53-year-old Angela Reilly, was also arrested.
UNITED STATES
Dog treks nearly 2,000km
Eighteen months after Sinatra the brown-and-white husky disappeared from his home in New York, he ended up wandering in a Florida neighborhood, where 13-year-old Rose Verrill took him in. It turned out Sinatra once belonged to 16-year-old Zion Willis, who died in a gun accident in Brooklyn, New York, in 2015. He was to be reunited with her family in Baltimore yesterday. No one knows how the dog traveled 1,931km from New York to Seffner, which is near Tampa, the Tampa Bay Times reported. Sinatra was a 14th birthday gift for Zion. One day a year-and-a-half after Zion’s death, the dog left and never came home. It was a tragic loss for Zion’s grieving parents.
‘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
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