■CHINA
CNPC containing pollution
China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) sought to contain ocean pollution and other impacts from an explosion of two crude oil pipelines in the northeastern port of Dalian, state media reported yesterday. Hundreds of firefighters battled for more than 15 hours to extinguish the blaze that started late on Friday when a pipe transporting crude oil from a ship to a storage tank blew up, causing a second pipeline nearby to explode. There were no casualties, but state television CCTV reported that oil had contaminated a 50km² area of the ocean off the port city in Liaoning Province.
■CHINA
Bus plunges into river
A bus plunged into a river in the southwest early yesterday, leaving 27 people on board missing and feared dead, state media reported. Rescuers were able to save 11 others. The official Xinhua news agency said the accident occurred in southwestern Sichuan Province when the long-distance passenger bus fell into the Dajin River in Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. Xinhua had initially reported that the bus had fallen off a cliff, killing 23 people. The bus had been traveling from Ma’erkang County to the provincial capital of Chengdu when it plummeted into the river. It was designed to carry a maximum of 35 people but had 38 people aboard, including three children, Xinhua said.
■AFGHANISTAN
Taliban stage prison break
Taliban militants staged a daring prison break early yesterday when they blew up the main gates of a jail in the west and freed 14 inmates, police said. The insurgents planted a bomb at a gate of the main prison in Farah city, capital of Farah Province, provincial police chief Mohammad Faqir Askar said. “Twenty prisoners escaped but we arrested six of them soon after the incident and 14 are still at large,” he said. Askar blamed the blast on Taliban militants who have been waging a bloody insurgency for almost nine years. He said four other inmates had been injured in the blast.
■BANGLADESH
Islamist books removed
The government has ordered tens of thousands of mosques and libraries to remove books written by the controversial founder of an Islamic party, an official said on Saturday. The state-run Islamic Foundation took the decision after Syed Abul Ala Maududi’s books were deemed “anti-Islamic” and likely to foster militancy in the Indian subcontinent, its head Shamim Mohammad Afjal said. Maududi is the founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, which has a large number of followers in South Asia — home to about 450 million Muslims. The Jamaat is the country’s largest Islamic party, with two elected lawmakers in the parliament.
■AUSTRALIA
Irish tourist drowns
A 27-year-old Irish tourist has drowned after getting into difficulties at a remote swimming spot in the north, police said yesterday. The man’s body was found late on Saturday at the Malabanjbanjdju billabong, or pool, in Kakadu National Park, made famous as the setting for the 1986 film Crocodile Dundee. Police said the man was with a group of about 20 tourists who raised the alarm after he failed to surface. They did not believe a crocodile was involved. “The National Park rangers located his body in about 2m of water,” a police spokesman told public broadcaster ABC. “There’s no indications a crocodile was involved, however we have to wait until the autopsy results.”
■UNITED KINGDOM
Ban on veils ‘unlikely’
A ban on Muslim women wearing face-covering veils is “very unlikely,” despite widespread public support for such a move, Immigration Minister Damian Green said. He told the Sunday Telegraph that a ban similar to that approved in France, and which a poll on Friday showed was backed by 67 percent of respondents, was a “rather un-British thing to do.” A fellow Conservative lawmaker had earlier said he refused to meet female constituents who wore the face veil and had proposed a law to ban the practice. However, Green said: “Telling people what they can and can’t wear, if they’re just walking down the street, is a rather un-British thing to do. We’re a tolerant and mutually respectful society.”
■Sweden
Bubbly found in shipwreck
Divers have discovered what is thought to be the world’s oldest drinkable champagne in a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea, one of the finders said on Saturday. They tasted the one bottle they’ve brought up so far before they even got back to shore. Diving instructor Christian Ekstrom said the bottles are believed to be from the 1780s and likely were part of a cargo destined for Russia. The nationality of the sunken ship has not yet been determined. “We brought up the bottle to be able to establish how old the wreck was,” he said. Ekstrom said the divers were overjoyed when they popped the cork on their boat after hauling the bubbly from a depth of 60m. “It tasted fantastic. It was a very sweet champagne, with a tobacco taste and oak,” Ekstrom said.
■Switzerland
Polanski attends concert
Film director Roman Polanski, freed earlier this week from house arrest, attended a Saturday night concert given by his wife at the Montreux jazz festival. The 76-year-old Polanski arrived with festival founder Claude Nobs for the performance by French actress and singer Emmanuelle Seigner on the closing night of the annual event on Lake Geneva, according to a Reuters witness. Polanski was mobbed by photographers as he arrived with heavy security, but did not speak or appear on the stage during his wife’s 55-minute set, which he watched from a VIP box.
■France
Drugs found in Hilton’s bag
Paris Hilton was briefly detained in Corsica after sniffer dogs detected a “quite small” quantity of marijuana in her bag, a French newspaper reported on Saturday. Corse Matin newspaper said officers at the airport in Figari found about 1g worth of marijuana. Hilton, who was transiting the French Mediterranean island in a private jet on Friday, was hauled in for questioning and released about 30 minutes later, the report said.
■Albania
Bus crash kills 14
Fourteen people died and 12 were injured, many of them seriously, on Saturday at about 5pm when a bus fell off a cliff 140km north of the capital, Tirana, Albanian authorities said. Police official Hysni Burgaj said a sudden downpour caused the accident. Authorities still did not know the total number of bus passengers late on Saturday. The bus fell 30 to 40m off a cliff in Dom Gjegjan village, in the district of Puka, police said. The injured were brought to hospitals in the Albanian capital, Tirana, and the northern city of Shkodra. The government has declared Sunday a day of national mourning, with flags flying at half-mast.
■UNITED STATES
Biden campaign penalized
Vice President Joe Biden’s 2008 presidential campaign has been ordered to pay a US$219,000 penalty for improperly accepting a discounted private plane flight and taking individual campaign contributions above the legal limit, to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) said. The FEC took the action against the Biden for President organization after an audit of the campaign’s activities, according to a statement dated Friday on the agency’s Web site. A Biden spokeswoman said the vice president will pay the penalty to the US Treasury to resolve the matter.
■PUERTO RICO
Dengue epidemic strikes
Mosquito-borne dengue fever is reaching epidemic stages across the Caribbean, with dozens of deaths reported and health authorities concerned it could get much worse as the rainy season advances. The increase in cases is being blamed on warm weather and an unusually early rainy season, which has produced an explosion of mosquitoes. Health officials say the flood of cases is straining the region’s hospitals. In the Dominican Republic, where at least 27 deaths have been reported, hundreds of health workers and soldiers went door-to-door on Saturday to warn about the virus and destroy mosquito breeding areas. Hospitals in Trinidad are running out of beds and Puerto Rico is facing what officials say could be its worst dengue outbreak in more than a decade. At least five people have died and another 6,300 suspected cases have been reported.
■CANADA
Four killed in plane crash
Four people died and two were injured in a float plane crash in bad weather in northern Quebec, authorities said on Saturday. The Canadian military sent out a patrol to locate the de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver aircraft after it was deemed overdue by its owner Air Saguenay, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada and provincial police said. “The plane crashed into the side of a mountain in thick fog,” said Chantale LaFlamme, spokeswoman for the Transportation Safety Board. “Paramedics parachuted onto the scene,” added Sergeant Benoit Richard of the provincial police. Two survivors of the crash were airlifted to hospital, where one was treated for “serious burns” and the other for “relatively minor injuries, given the circumstances,” he said.
■UNITED STATES
Man cited over rattlers
A man in Malta, Idaho, who authorities say had 25 Western rattlesnakes in a large bucket in his apartment, has been issued two misdemeanor citations by the state’s Department of Fish and Game. Officials said Terry Brian Teeter had as many as 32 snakes, but he gave some away and ate two others. The 38-year-old said he was unaware a license was needed to hunt rattlesnakes in Idaho. He said he also didn’t know that there was a state limit of four rattlers a year. Teeter said he was trying to find a buyer for the snakes and had contacted a Utah research center that milks snakes for venom.
■UNITED STATES
Gabor rushed to hospital
Zsa Zsa Gabor’s publicist said the 93-year-old actress was rushed to a hospital after falling out of bed and breaking several bones. John Blanchette said Gabor was watching television in her Bel Air home on Saturday evening when she reached to answer the phone and tumbled to the floor. He didn’t know what bones were broken.
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
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