■ CHINA
Arrests made over bad milk
Police in the north have arrested seven people suspected of producing powdered milk tainted with the same industrial chemical that killed at least six babies in 2008, state press said yesterday. Wang Zhigang (王志剛), an official at the Jinfulai dairy company in Shanxi Province, was among those arrested for allegedly putting excessive amounts of melamine in the milk powder, the Procuratorial Daily reported. The 26 tonnes of tainted product had also been made with unsold milk powder past its sell-by date and then distributed in the provinces of Hunan and Henan, it added. Melamine, normally used in plastics and other products, was added to milk to make it appear to have higher protein content.
■ INDIA
Trains collide in bad weather
Two trains collided in bad weather yesterday in an early morning accident that left at least 22 dead and dozens injured, railway and police officials told reporters. The crash occurred in the Shivpuri district of Madhya Pradesh, about 350km from state capital Bhopal, when a goods train smashed into a passenger train waiting at a station in heavy rain. “Relief operations are on while the injured are being admitted to nearby hospitals,” local railway manager Ghanshyam Singh told reporters. A railway spokesman in Bhopal said 50 people were injured and 18 had been hospitalized. Television pictures showed several damaged carriages, one of which had been lifted up off the tracks by the force of the accident.
■ AUSTRALIA
Former refugee sentenced
A court sentenced a Sri Lanka-born refugee to more than five years in prison yesterday for helping to smuggle almost 200 asylum seekers in a leaky boat. Asylum seekers from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan are taking boats in record numbers, fueling a divisive debate among political parties about how they can be deterred. Sydney spice shop owner Pathmendra Pulendren, 36, pleaded guilty this month to acting as an agent for an Indonesia-based Sri Lankan who arranged the passage of 20 ethnic Tamil Sri Lankan men in a boat from Malaysia in June last year. Pulendren, who came by boat in 2007 as a Tamil asylum seeker, alerted police to the voyage when he discovered that 194 Tamils were to make it. “He told police that he believed that the vessel was overcrowded and feared for the safety of the people on board,” Judge Robyn Tupman said during Pulendren’s sentencing. Pulendren must serve at least three years before he is eligible for parole.
■ INDIA
Monsoon rains kill dozens
Heavy monsoon rains and landslides swept the hilly areas of the north over the weekend, killing at least 47 people, officials said yesterday. Twenty-four people died on Sunday as falling boulders crushed their homes in three villages in Almorah district in Uttrakhand state, said Prashant Kumar Tamta, a state government spokesman. Another 23 people were either swept away by floodwaters or died when homes collapsed in landslides in the Pitthoragarh, Champawat and Uttarkashi regions of the state on Saturday and Sunday, Tamta said. Rains continued to lash the region yesterday, threatening dozens of villages near Tehri Dam whose water level was nearing the danger level. The country is experiencing an excessive rainfall during this monsoon season after a drought last year. The rainfall recorded between Sept. 1 and Wednesday last week was 22 percent above the average for the period, according to the India Meteorological Department.
■ GERMANY
Woman killed in shoot out
Four people died and a policeman was seriously wounded in the town of Loerrach, near the Swiss and French borders, after an explosion in an apartment building and a shooting in the neighboring hospital that authorities believe are linked, Loerrach prosecutor Dieter Inhofer told ZDF public television. A woman, was seen running from the blast into the neighboring St. Elisabeth hospital, where she reportedly opened fire, killing a member of the hospital staff, Inhofer said. She then shot at officers responding to the shooting and was killed in an exchange of gunfire, Inhofer said. One police officer was seriously wounded. Police are still searching for a motive for the shooting.
■ ISRAEL
Gaza allowed car imports
The import of private vehicles into the Gaza Strip is to be permitted for the first time since 2007, the military said on Sunday. The cars were expected to cross into the besieged strip yesterday morning, but it was not immediately clear how many there would be. Tel Aviv began easing its blockade of the Hamas-ruled territory in the spring and started allowing all purely civilian goods to enter after its deadly May 31 seizure of an aid flotilla sparked international outrage, though the naval blockade has been maintained. The blockade was first imposed when a soldier was captured in June 2006 and tightened when Hamas seized power a year later.
■ NIGER
France deploys in Africa
The French military has been allowed to use the nation’s airspace and territory for the first time in almost 25 years, a source close to the government said on Sunday, the latest step in the fight against al-Qaeda’s North African wing. Five French nationals were among seven foreigners kidnapped in Arlit, a northern mining area, last week. The radical Islamist group, known as AQIM, is thought to be behind the attack. The source said around 100 French anti-terrorism specialists arrived in Niamey on reconnaissance aircraft. A spokesman for the French Defense Ministry said he had no information about French military arriving in the country. “After what happened in Arlit, we gave our consent to France for it to deploy aircraft, and personnel on our soil, to find the hostages and free them,” said a source close to the ruling military junta, speaking on condition of anonymity. Frenchman Michel Germaneau, 78, held hostage by AQIM, was killed in July after a raid in the Sahara desert involving French troops failed to free him.
■ KUWAIT
Government bans rallies
Public gatherings were banned on Sunday in a bid to contain rising tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in the Gulf State over inflammatory remarks by Shiite activist Yasser al-Habeeb, who has lived in self-imposed exile in London since 2004. “This is a [sectarian] rift and it must be stopped,” head of the Interior Ministry’s legal department Brigadier Asaad al-Ruwayeh told a news conference as he read an official statement banning gatherings. Ruwayeh said violators could face a two-year jail term, adding that the ministry is taking the measures to “safeguard security and stability.” Acting Premier and Defense Minister Sheikh Jaber Mubarak al-Sabah later said the “government will firmly confront all those trying to drag the country into a sectarian rift.” The decision came as several Sunni Islamist groups announced public gatherings to press for the extradition of al-Habeeb.
■ MEXICO
City remembers 1985 quake
In solemn ceremonies and Roman Catholic masses, Mexico City commemorated the 25th anniversary on Sunday of a magnitude 8.1 earthquake that killed as many as 10,000 people and sparked an outpouring of civic action that many say helped lead the nation to democracy. After the quake, as government officials, army troops and police dithered, neighbors organized rescue teams to pull victims from the rubble. Cuauhtemoc Abarca, 53, who at the time was a neighborhood leader and went on to a career as a community activist said the activism awakened by the quake is still alive. “There is more participation in general, in a lot of aspects,” he said. “But the government has dedicated itself to dispersing it, creating smoke screens, to act as if it was listening.”
■ MEXICO
Paper addresses drug gangs
The biggest newspaper in Ciudad Juarez, the country’s crime capital along the US border, pleaded with feuding drug cartels on Sunday for a truce, after one of its photographers was killed. “We ask you to explain what you want from us, what you want us to publish or stop publishing,” El Diario de Juarez wrote in a front-page editorial. Unidentified gunmen attacked two of the paper’s photographers last Thursday, shooting dead 21-year-old Luis Carlos Santiago and leaving Carlos Sanchez seriously wounded.
“You are the de facto authority in the city now,” the editorial said, referring to warring cartels that have killed more than 2,000 people in Ciudad Juarez alone so far this year, despite the presence of about 4,500 federal police and military.
■ UNITED STATES
Lady Gaga to attend rally
Organizers said Lady Gaga was visiting Maine’s largest city to join a rally against the military’s ban on service members being openly gay. The singer was expected to attend a Service members Legal Defense Network event near the University of Southern Maine’s Portland campus yesterday. Network spokesman Trevor Thomas said she was expected to stand alongside veterans discharged because of the so-called “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which forbids military recruiters from asking about people’s sexual orientations and prohibits service members from revealing if they’re gay. The organization is trying to pressure Republican senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins to support repeal of the policy. Lady Gaga recently called on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to repeal the policy during an interview with TV host Ellen DeGeneres.
■ PERU
Farmers seize power plant
Protesting coca farmers on Sunday took over a thermoelectric power plant in the central Ucayali jungle region, taking 30 workers hostage, regional authorities said. The farmers have been protesting for more than a week, demanding an end to coca plantation eradication projects in the area. Coca is the source plant for the illegal drug cocaine, but is also used for other legal purposes. Andean Indians have chewed coca leaves for centuries. “By taking over the power plant, the coca farmers have left several towns in the region without power,” said Ucayali regional president Edgar Gutierrez. The angry farmers have also blocked several parts of the main trans-Andean east-west highway connecting Lima to central areas. The country has overtaken Colombia to become the world’s leading producer of coca leaf, according to a UN report in June.
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
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