CHINA
Blast kills six at cafe
At least six people were killed and 38 injured when a powerful explosion hit an Internet cafe in Kaili City, Guizhou Province, on Saturday evening, reducing it to ruins, state media reported. The blast ripped through the cafe at about 11pm, state television said yesterday, citing local police. The broadcast showed rescue workers pulling victims from the devastated building and rushing the injured to hospital. The blast may have been triggered by “inflammable and explosive materials” kept in a nearby storage room, the report said. Police were still investigating the cause of the explosion, which also smashed windows in neighboring buildings.
THAILAND
King’s health raises concern
The country is marking the 83rd birthday of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world’s longest reigning monarch, but elaborate celebrations fail to mask concern over his health and the future of the royal institution. Bhumibol delivered his annual birthday speech yesterday, sounding what has become his usual call for unity to keep the country happy and prosperous in the face of the sometimes violent political conflict it has faced in recent years. The king made his brief remarks at the ceremonial Grand Palace in a slow and rasping voice, reflecting his frailty. Thousands of flag-waving citizens cheered his car’s journey from Siriraj Hospital, to which he was admitted in September last year, with a lung inflammation. There has been no detailed explanation of his extended stay.
MALAYSIA
Police break up protest
Police fired tear gas and water yesterday at protesters at an opposition-backed rally in Kuala Lumpur. Xavier Jayakumar, a legislator in central Selangor State, said police fired tear gas and water canon at a crowd of thousands. He said at least five people were also arrested. Reporters at the scene, who declined to be named, said rounds of tear gas sent people running into side streets near the big National Mosque before they regrouped. The protesters, including several opposition parliamentarians, gathered to speak out against the federal government’s interference of water management in Selangor, Xavier said. Selangor is run by the national opposition People’s Alliance, of which Xavier is a member. Gatherings of five or more people need police permission and authorities often crack down on protests.
MALAYSIA
Man deported for ‘terror’ link
An Indonesian man linked to the extremist Jemaah Islamiyah outfit has been deported, the Jakarta Post reported yesterday. Fadli Sadama arrived at Jakarta airport on Saturday evening under heavy guard, the Post reported. Sadama was suspected of having links with a local “terror” network and the Pattani United Liberation Organization separatist group in South Thailand, National Anti-Terror Agency director Petrus Golose was quoted as saying. “Fadli planned to train ... before returning to Indonesia to plot acts of terrorism in Pekanbaru, Riau Province, and in the Mount Anak Krakatau area with foreign tourists as his main target,” Golose added. Reports have said that Sadama was arrested on Oct. 13 while traveling to Johor and was found to be carrying two guns. Sadama is believed to be linked to a group suspected of killing a police officer in a spectacular bank robbery in the capital of Indonesia’s North Sumatra, Medan, in August.
UNITED STATES
Santa helps out needy
“Secret Santas” are roaming the streets of North Carolina, handing out US$100 handshakes. The Charlotte Observer reported that the crew of donors, who insist on anonymity, handed out the US$100 bills on Friday to anyone who looked like they could use it. Felicia Adams was handed US$100 while working at a Goodwill outlet store. She said the money will help her get to New York to visit her father who is dying of cancer. The donors take thousands of dollars from their own bank accounts to hand out. It’s the fourth year the random acts of kindness have been done in Charlotte. This year, a half-dozen volunteers from the Charlotte police and fire departments tagged along, guiding the group through the city and pointing out people they could help.
ECUADOR
Volcano fear downgraded
Authorities downgraded a warning late on Saturday about a possible major eruption of the Tungurahua volcano. The alert was reduced from the maximum red to orange as activity eased, the national civil defense office said. The Geophysical Institute in Quito earlier reported a “very rapid and sustained increase in seismic activity and other manifestations at the surface” since early Saturday. A red alert was also in effect in Banos and other Andean villages near the 5,029m volcano, whose name means “throat of fire” in the local Quechua language. In 1999, the 15,000 inhabitants of the town were forcibly evacuated after a powerful eruption and not allowed to return for a year. Tungurahua’s biggest eruption, in August 2006, left six people dead and destroyed hundreds of homes.
HONDURAS
Canadians attacked
A Canadian man was killed and his 13-year-old daughter raped when their boat was attacked last week, police said on Saturday after they found the boat stranded in a lagoon near the northwestern port of Tela. The girl, Myda Egrmajer, was rescued by a passing oil tanker and taken to Puerto Cortes, a few kilometers to the east of Tela, criminal investigation chief Abelino Gomez told reporters. He said the body of Ottawa resident Milan Egrmajer, 55, was found in the lagoon where the attack took place late on Thursday. It had seven gunshot wounds. Father and daughter were sailing in their yacht from Guatemala to the island of Utila when they had to put in at a lagoon near Tela due to bad weather on Thursday. Before they could set sail again, they were chased by another boat boarded and attacked by several men, according to media reports. Alerted to the attack, authorities said bad weather prevented then reaching the stranded Canadians until Saturday.
GREECE
Suspected bombers nabbed
An official says counterterrorism police have raided a location outside Athens where they seized weapons and arrested several people. Local media reported that four people were taken into custody, but the police spokesman who confirmed the raid would not say how many arrests were made. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in compliance with police rules. Last month, a radical anarchist group called Conspiracy Nuclei of Fire, claimed responsibility for a spate of parcel bombings. Most of the 14 packages, all using tiny amounts of explosives, were intercepted by police and destroyed, though a delivery service employee suffered minor burns in a small blast.
‘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
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
Prime ministers, presidents and royalty on Saturday descended on Cairo to attend the spectacle-laden inauguration of a sprawling new museum built near the pyramids to house one of the world’s richest collections of antiquities. The inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum, or GEM, marks the end of a two-decade construction effort hampered by the Arab Spring uprisings, the COVID-19 pandemic and wars in neighboring countries. “We’ve all dreamed of this project and whether it would really come true,” Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a news conference, calling the museum a “gift from Egypt to the whole world from a
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