ISRAEL
Gaza fuel supply blocked
The government yesterday blocked fuel deliveries to the Gaza Strip, citing new incendiary balloons from the Palestinian enclave. The move follows “the release of arson balloons from the Gaza Strip toward the State of Israel,” which caused fires across the border, the Ministry of Defense department responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs said. Fuel transfers were halted at the Karem Shalom goods crossing yesterday morning and would remain blocked “until further notice,” it said in a statement. Balloons with attached incendiary devices are flown over the Gaza border by Palestinian protesters seeking to start fires in Israeli farmland. During regular demonstrations last year the balloons started hundreds of fires, though they have been curbed in recent months. Fuel deliveries, which are coordinated with the UN and paid for by Qatar, were agreed late last year as part of a truce between the Israeli government and Hamas.
VIETNAM
Virus hits industrial farms
The nation has culled nearly 10 percent of its pig herd to contain an African swine fever outbreak that has started hitting large-scale industrial farms, the government said in a statement yesterday. Earlier outbreaks have appeared mostly at small household farms, but have now started to occur at larger industrial operations, including Phu Son Farm in Dong Nai Province near Ho Chi Minh City, the statement said. “This is a very worrying sign as these farms have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of pigs each and therefore the damages would be significant,” the government said in a statement on its official Web site. African swine fever was first detected in the nation in February and has spread to farms in 60 of the 63 provinces, according to the statement.
INDIA
Arrests over lynching
Police yesterday arrested 11 people over the killing of a Muslim man, who was tortured and forced to chant Hindu slogans in the latest mob violence to shock the nation. Two police officers have also been suspended over the handling of the lynching of Tabrez Ansari, captured on a video that went viral on social media. The 24-year-old is seen in the video crying and pleading as a mob in Jharkhand State forces him to chant “Jai Sri Ram” (hail Lord Ram). Ansari had been accused by villagers of carrying out a burglary. He was tied to a pole and beaten for up to 12 hours before police first detained him in Seraikela, and then took him to hospital, where he died on Saturday. Media reports said Ansari’s wife has accused police of deliberately taking him to jail first — instead of a hospital — despite the critical injuries he suffered.
UNITED KINGDOM
F-35s fly Mideast missions
Secretary of Defense Penny Mordaunt said that the nation’s most advanced military aircraft, the Lightning F-35B, has flown its first missions over Syria and Iraq as part of the ongoing operations against the Islamic State group. A statement released yesterday quoted Mordaunt as saying that the jets’ first operational mission from a British airbase in Cyprus, where they have been undergoing training since May 21, is “a significant step into the future for the UK.” Military officials had said there were no plans for the aircraft to conduct combat missions during their stay at RAF Akrotiri, but it was decided that they were ready to make their operational debut because of their “exceptional performance.” Officials said the aircraft did not fire any weapons when flying alongside Typhoon jets.
UNITED KINGDOM
Hangovers hurt economy
The nation’s economy suffers a £1.4 billion (US$1.8 billion) cost from people coming to work either hungover or still drunk, the London-based Institute for Alcohol Studies review of a survey of 3,400 employees found. The respondents on average judged themselves to be 39 percent less effective when they persist in going into work despite having had one too many beforehand. The analysis factored that result together with average labor costs to reach the estimate on economic damage. The government underestimates the overall economic cost of alcohol, because it does not take into account “presenteeism” by drunk or hungover people, otherwise its measurement of such damage would be £8.7 billion, the researchers said.
UNITED STATES
Stars read Mueller report
Top actors ranging from John Lithgow, Kevin Kline, Joel Grey to Jason Alexander, Alfre Woodard and Annette Bening took part on Monday night in a live reading of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Mark Hamill, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Sigourney Weaver made recorded video appearances during the performance of The Investigation: A Search for Truth in Ten Acts at New York City’s Riverside Church. The Investigation was created by playwright and actor Robert Schenkkan.
URUGUAY
Italian mobster flees prison
A top Italian crime boss escaped during Sunday night from the Montevideo prison where he was awaiting extradition to Italy, the Ministry of the Interior said on Monday. Rocco Morabito, as a key figure in the Calabria-based ’Ndrangheta, and three other inmates got out “through the roof” of a prison about midnight before making their way “through a neighboring farm and robbing its owner,” the ministry said. Morabito has been on the run from Italy since 1994 and was sentenced there to 30 years in prison for drug trafficking. He was arrested in Montevideo in 2017.
HONDURAS
FUSINA fire on students
Military police known as FUSINA on Monday opened fire on protesting students at the National Autonomous University of Honduras, wounding at least five, campus and hospital officials said. Hundreds of students at the Tegucigalpa school were calling for President Juan Orlando Hernandez to resign. “About 40 military police entered the university campus without authorization,” the university’s director of institutional development, Armando Sarmiento, told the media. FUSINA said the “alleged students” had attacked with “modified Molotov cocktails to make them more lethal,” adding that two officers had been burned.
UNITED STATES
Accuser not my type: Trump
President Donald Trump on Monday again vigorously denied E. Jean Carroll’s allegations that he sexually assaulted her in the mid-1990s in a New York department store dressing room, adding: “She’s not my type.” In an interview with The Hill in the Oval Office, Trump said: “Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened. It never happened, OK?” Carroll was “totally lying,” he said. Carroll makes the allegation in her new book, an excerpt of which was published by New York magazine last week. Carroll on Monday told CNN that he “just went at it” after he cornered her and that she never went to the police because she was afraid of repercussions, but now she was considering filing a complaint.
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
‘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