INDIA
Food poisoning kills 11
Police yesterday said that they arrested three people after at least 11 died of suspected food poisoning following a ceremony to celebrate the construction of a new Hindu temple. Police officer Musharraf said that more than 130 sick people were recovering from poisoning in hospitals in Chamarajnagar District of Karnataka State. Musharraf, who uses one name, said that Hindu devotees ate contaminated cooked vegetables and rice on Friday. They immediately started vomiting, complained of severe stomach pain and were taken to nearby hospitals. Musharraf said eight of those hospitalized were in critical condition. He said three members of the temple’s management have been arrested and samples of the food sent for chemical analysis.
TURKEY
Khashoggi recording heard
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday said that he has heard an audio recording in which a suspected killer of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi allegedly says: “I know how to cut well.” Erdogan said that the man heard in the recording was a high-level soldier and “morgue employee” who “openly” said he could dissect a body. Ankara has shared the audio recording with Saudi Arabia, the US, Germany and others. It says that a 15-person hit squad killed Khashoggi on Oct. 2 in Saudi Arabia’s Istanbul consulate. His remains have not been found. Erdogan also criticized Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman for saying the journalist had left the consulate, a claim he later reversed. “This nation is not dumb, it knows how to hold [people] accountable,” Erdogan said.
FRANCE
Proust book auctioned
A first edition of Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way on Friday sold for 1.51 million euros (US$1.7 million) in Paris, a world record for a French book, auction house Sotheby’s said. The rare copy of the first volume of the French writer’s masterpiece, Remembrance of Things Past, had been expected to go for between 600,000 euros and 800,000 euros. It smashed the previous record for a piece of French literature held by poet Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil), a copy of which sold for 775,000 euros nine years ago. The copy of Swann’s Way is the first from a numbered luxuriously bound edition of the novel that Proust paid for himself and gave to his friend Lucien Daudet. It was the star lot in the fourth part of the mammoth sale of the library of the late French fashion mogul Pierre Berge. The cofounder of the Yves Saint Laurent fashion empire put together one of the world’s greatest private collections of rare and antiquarian books.
UNITED STATES
Migrant girl dies
Seven-year-old Guatemalan Jakelin Amei Rosmery Caal Maquin died of apparent dehydration after arriving at the US border with Mexico having not had anything to eat or drink for days. Maquin and her father were picked up by border authorities with other migrants this month in the New Mexico desert. About seven hours later, she was put on a bus to the nearest Border Patrol station, but soon began vomiting. By the end of the two-hour drive, she had stopped breathing. Customs and Border Protection on Friday said that the girl initially appeared healthy and that an interview raised no signs of trouble.
‘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