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.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
‘SHORTSIGHTED’: Using aid as leverage is punitive, would not be regarded well among Pacific Island nations and would further open the door for China, an academic said New Zealand has suspended millions of dollars in budget funding to the Cook Islands, it said yesterday, as the relationship between the two constitutionally linked countries continues to deteriorate amid the island group’s deepening ties with China. A spokesperson for New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said in a statement that New Zealand early this month decided to suspend payment of NZ$18.2 million (US$11 million) in core sector support funding for this year and next year as it “relies on a high trust bilateral relationship.” New Zealand and Australia have become increasingly cautious about China’s growing presence in the Pacific
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