PHILIPPINES
Floods death toll climbs
The death toll from landslides and devastating floods triggered by a tropical depression climbed to 85, officials said yesterday, and 20 people were missing as rescuers slowly reached cut-off communities. Bicol, with a population of 5.8 million, was the hardest hit, with 68 killed in intense rains and landslides. Officials put three provinces under a “state of calamity” to give them access to emergency funds.
SAUDI ARABIA
Netflix pulls comedy show
Netflix pulled an episode of the comedy show Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj from its Internet streaming service in the kingdom after officials complained, media reported on Tuesday. The episode of the news and comedy program in question criticized the government over last year’s slaying of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom’s consulate in Turkey.
SOMALIA
UN envoy ordered to leave
The government has ordered the UN top envoy to the troubled country to leave, accusing him of “deliberately interfering with the country’s sovereignty.” The order comes days after the UN official, Nicholas Haysom, raised concerns at the action of Somalia’s UN-backed security services in recent violence that left several people dead. “The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Somalia, Nicholas Haysom, is no longer welcome in Somalia and cannot operate in the country,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement late on Tuesday.
GERMANY
Racist rams car into crowd
A 50-year-old man clearly intended to kill foreigners when he rammed his silver Mercedes into a crowd of people in the northwestern town of Bottrop in the early hours of New Year’s Day, injuring four, a senior government official said. “A German man deliberately drove into crowds of people ... that were largely made up of foreigners. There was a clear intention by this man to kill foreigners,” Herbert Reul, interior minister of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, where Bottrop is located, told reporters on Tuesday.
UNITED KINGDOM
Terrorist suspect detained
A probe into a stabbing at a Manchester railway station on New Year’s Eve that injured three people is being treated as “a terrorist investigation,” the city’s police said on Tuesday. The 25-year-old man who was arrested at the scene on Monday night is now being detained under a mental health law, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said Tuesday. The suspect reportedly shouted: “Allah” and “long live the Caliphate,” during what GMP Chief Constable Ian Hopkins called a “horrific attack” on three people, including a police officer.
UNITED STATES
Romney blasts Trump
Mitt Romney, the former 2016 Republican presidential candidate and incoming US senator from Utah, sharply criticized US President Donald Trump and suggested that Trump had caused dismay around the world. In a Washington Post essay published on Tuesday evening, Romney criticized a number of Trump’s actions last month. Romney wrote that “on balance, [Trump’s] conduct over the past two years ... is evidence that the president has not risen to the mantle of the office.”
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