EGYPT
Mummy find announced
The Ministry of Antiquities on Saturday unveiled more than 40 mummies dating back to the Ptolemaic era at a burial site in Tunah Al-Gabal, 260km south of Cairo. Archeologist Rami Rasmi said there were 12 children and six animals, and the rest were adult men and women. The remains were laid on the floor or in open clay coffins in the chamber. The graves in Minya Governate, discovered during an excavation that started in February last year, are in a communal tomb “probably belonging to a petty bourgeois family,” the ministry said.
Photo: AP
PHILIPPINES
Chinese center probed
The government will protest China’s opening of a maritime rescue center on Fiery Cross Reef (Yongshu Reef, 永暑礁), Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin said yesterday, just days after President Rodrigo Duterte’s spokesman said the nation should be grateful for the move. Locsin said he supports Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio’s position that the nation must contest China’s construction of the center, which Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday. “We will” protest if the reports turn out to be true, Locsin said on Twitter. “I however preferred engaging them openly on the floor of the UN General Assembly.” He said his department is awaiting National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon’s assessment as the government cannot rely on media accounts.
INDIA
Derailment kills seven
Seven people were killed and 29 injured when nine coaches of a New Delhi-bound train derailed early yesterday about 30km north of Patna, the Bihar state capital, officials said. Most of the passengers were asleep when the train jumped the tracks. Hundreds of villagers rushed to help rescuers and disaster management personnel to pull out people trapped in the twisted metal and overturned coaches. Indian Railways official Rajesh Dutt Bajpai said that by noon, the rescue work was over. Two of the injured were in critical condition, he said.
NIGERIA
Amnesty report rejected
The army on Saturday rejected an Amnesty International report that said Boko Haram extremists killed at least 60 people in a “devastating” attack on the northeastern border town of Rann. The army in a Facebook post dismissed as “outlandish and unverified” the witness statements that soldiers had left their posts the day before the attack on Monday last week. The army said no attack occurred that day. Amnesty on Friday published satellite imagery that it said showed “hundreds of burned structures” after fighters on motorcycles drove into the town and set homes on fire. The army said the report was “another futile effort” to portray the military as incapable.
SOMALIA
Al-Shabaab fighters killed
Thirteen members of al-Shabaab were killed on Friday in an airstrike 48km outside Mogadishu, the US Africa Command said on Saturday. The strike occurred near Gandarshe in Lower Shabelle region, which the al-Qaeda-linked fighters have used as a staging area for bombings in Mogadishu, it said. It was the 10th US airstrike in the country this year.
‘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