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.
Arsenio Butil Jr fell to his knees and began to pray when last week’s deadly magnitude 7.8 earthquake began shaking his home on the coast of the southern Philippines. When he opened his eyes, he saw a once-familiar shoreline changing in real time, with swathes of previously submerged coral suddenly pushing above the waterline. The June 8 quake, driven by a shifting of the nearby Cotabato Trench, toppled buildings, triggered landslides and killed at least 76 people on the southern island of Mindanao. The tectonic forces at work also thrust chunks of the island’s coastline upward in a phenomenon known as “coastal uplift,”
YUCK OR YUM? While it is difficult to sell second-hand goods that are more than seven years old in Japan, they are still popular in foreign markets, an executive said Under a scorching sun in a Bangkok suburb, a whistle blew, and shouts filled the air as dozens of shoppers rushed into a warehouse bearing the sign “Japanese Second-Hand Store.” From bags and bicycles to surfboards and suitcases, the Japanese second-hand market is booming, with quality-conscious buyers in other Asian countries increasingly tapping into the circular economy trend. “What is considered garbage for them can still be useful in Thailand,” said 36-year-old Lookpoo Sathitpanyapon, who runs an online store selling toy keychains. “That bag, that bag,” one shopper shouted while racing through the warehouse, filled with everything from colorful toys
Growing up in Tahiti, Anna-Bella Failloux saw first-hand the threat posed by mosquitoes: Nearly one-third of adults on the picturesque island once had swollen limbs from elephantiasis caused by their bites. She has since dedicated her life to studying mosquitoes and the diseases they transmit — a concern that looms ever larger as climate change expands the area where the insects roam. “You have to accept being bitten by a mosquito from time to time,” the 63-year-old entomologist at France’s Pasteur Institute said. “But we have to avoid too many people getting sick and dying from the infections,” Failloux said, as she observed
Kazakhstan signed accords with the start-up Firebird Inc on computing projects involving Nvidia Corp that could bring as much as US$10 billion in investment, as the Central Asian energy producer looks to position itself as an artificial intelligence (AI) hub. The pacts include a strategic cooperation agreement on developing AI infrastructure and terms for a planned large-scale project known as Data Center Valley in the country’s northeast, the Kazakh Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development said in a statement. The plan envisages US$5 billion in investments in phase one — including US$1 billion provided by state-run Kazakhtelecom — with commercial operations
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