BANGLADESH
Ten to die for bomb attack
The Dhaka Metropolitan Sessions Court yesterday sentenced 10 members of banned Islamist militant group Harkat-ul Jihad al-Islami to death for a bomb attack on a Communist Party rally in 2001. Judge Mohammed Rabiul Alam made the order in a crowded courtroom while four of the defendants were in the dock. Six of the defendants sentenced to death have absconded. The court acquitted two others who fled. On Jan. 20, 2001, bomb attacks on a party rally in Dhaka killed five people and wounded 50 others. Alam said investigators found Harkat-ul Jihad al-Islami’s former chief Mufti Abdul Hannan responsible for the party attack, but his name was dropped from the case because he was executed in 2017. He was hanged for a separate case involving a grenade attack on a British high commissioner in Bangladesh.
CHINA
Plastic ban by year-end
The nation is to ban non-degradable plastic bags in major cities and single-use straws from restaurants by the end of this year in a bid to cut down on waste. The plan targets a 30 percent reduction in non-degradable, disposable tableware for takeout in major cities within five years. In a document released on Sunday, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment said the production and sale of disposable foam and plastic tableware are to be banned by the end of the year. The plan also outlaws non-degradable, single-use straws in the catering industry this year, while disposable plastic products should not be “actively provided” by hotels by 2022. By 2025, the authorities said they planned to effectively control plastic pollution and cut the amount of waste in landfills of key cities, on top of setting up a management system.
INDONESIA
Footbridge falls, killing nine
A footbridge across a river swollen by heavy rains collapsed on the island of Sumatra, drowning at least nine people who were swept away by a strong current, with one person missing, disaster mitigation officials said. Seventeen people were rescued at the site of Sunday’s collapse in the province of Bengkulu, where the national disaster mitigation agency has launched a rescue effort, spokesman Agus Wibowo said. A crowd of about 30 people, mostly students, gathered on the bridge could have caused a strain leading to the collapse, Wibowo said. “They were watching the floods in the river below and then the bridge snapped, so they fell into the overflowing river,” he added.
CHINA
Quake causes damage
A strong earthquake damaged buildings and injured at least one person seriously in the Xinjiang region, the government said yesterday. Rescue teams were sent to Peyzawat County, an area east of the city of Kashgar, after the Sunday night quake. State broadcaster CCTV showed a cluster of small collapsed brick buildings and partially fallen walls that fronted properties along the street. The Ministry of Emergency Management said a number of people were injured, one seriously. CCTV reported at least two had minor injuries. The magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck at 9:21pm at a depth of 16km, the China Earthquake Networks Center said. The epicenter was 56km from Peyzawat and shaking was felt in the cities of Kashgar and Artux, the center said. The US Geological Survey reported the earthquake’s magnitude as 6.0 and its depth as 11km.
UNITED STATES
‘Times’ backs two democrats
The New York Times has endorsed two candidates for the Democratic nomination for president, senators Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren. The paper said on Sunday it had chosen the two most effective candidates from the moderate and progressive sides of the party — without stating a preference for either approach. It praised Warren as “a gifted story teller” and Klobuchar as “the very definition” of Midwestern charisma and grit. The Times said former vice president Joe Biden has years of experience, but also noted his age, 77, desire and occasional gaffes. “It is time for him to pass the torch to a new generation of political leaders,” the paper said.
UNITED STATES
Alaska volcano emits ash
An Alaska volcano that has been rumbling since the middle of summer on Sunday shot ash about 8km into the sky, triggering a warning to aviators and dusting a small fishing village, officials reported. Shishaldin Volcano, one of the most active in Alaska, kicked out a plume of ash that satellite imagery detected as high as 8,535m above sea level, according to the Alaska Volcano Observatory, the joint federal-state-university office that tracks the state’s many volcanoes. A sprinkling of ash was reported in the tiny Aleutian village of False Pass, about 37km northeast of the Shishaldin, said David Fee, the observatory’s University of Alaska Fairbanks coordinating scientist. “Someone reported some ash on their windshield,” he said.
MEXICO
Cartel suspect extradited
Prosecutors on Sunday said that they have extradited to the US an associate of jailed drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. Local media identified the suspect as Jose Sanchez Villalobos, a financial operator and tunnel builder for the jailed Guzman. “US prosecutors determined that Jose S. was the head of a criminal organization,” a statement from the prosecutors’ office said.
RUSSIA
Boiling water kills five
Five people died in the city of Perm yesterday after a hot-water pipe exploded in the night and flooded a basement hotel room with boiling water, a regional investigative committee said. At least three other people were taken to hospital with burns after the incident in the Mini Hotel Caramel, which is in the basement of a residential building, the committee said. Investigators opened a criminal case under the charge of the provision of services that do not meet safety requirements, with forensic investigators on hand to interview people who were at the scene, carry out examinations and secure evidence at the site.
PARAGUAY
Inmates escape prison
Nearly 80 prisoners, many of them members of a big Brazilian drug and arms-trafficking gang and described as “highly dangerous,” on Sunday escaped from a prison near the border with Brazil, police said. The inmates, who were Brazilian and Paraguayan, made their getaway through a tunnel they had dug from the prison in the city of Pedro Juan Caballero, police spokeswoman Elena Andrada said. “Our best men have gone to the border to attempt to recapture the prisoners,” Andrada said. Minister of Justice Cecilia Perez told reporters that it must have taken prisoners “several weeks” to build the tunnel. “It is evident that the staff knew nothing and did nothing,” Perez said. The prison’s warden was dismissed and dozens of guards were arrested.
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
‘NO WORKABLE SOLUTION’: An official said Pakistan engaged in the spirit of peace, but Kabul continued its ‘unabated support to terrorists opposed to Pakistan’ Pakistan yesterday said that negotiations for a lasting truce with Afghanistan had “failed to bring about a workable solution,” warning that it would take steps to protect its people. Pakistan and Afghanistan have been holding negotiations in Istanbul, Turkey, aimed at securing peace after the South Asian neighbors’ deadliest border clashes in years. The violence, which killed more than 70 people and wounded hundreds, erupted following explosions in Kabul on Oct. 9 that the Taliban authorities blamed on Pakistan. “Regrettably, the Afghan side gave no assurances, kept deviating from the core issue and resorted to blame game, deflection and ruses,” Pakistani Minister of
UNCERTAIN TOLLS: Images on social media showed small protests that escalated, with reports of police shooting live rounds as polling stations were targeted Tanzania yesterday was on lockdown with a communications blackout, a day after elections turned into violent chaos with unconfirmed reports of many dead. Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan had sought to solidify her position and silence criticism within her party in the virtually uncontested polls, with the main challengers either jailed or disqualified. In the run-up, rights groups condemned a “wave of terror” in the east African nation, which has seen a string of high-profile abductions that ramped up in the final days. A heavy security presence on Wednesday failed to deter hundreds protesting in economic hub Dar es Salaam and elsewhere, some
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