DR CONGO
Arms depot blast kills dozens
An explosion at an arms depot claimed more than 20 lives, the UN peacekeeping mission in the country (MONUSCO) said on Saturday. The city of Mbuji-Mayi “was ravaged with more than 20 dead, around 50 wounded and many destroyed houses” on Friday, MONUSCO said in a statement. A government spokesman gave an initial death toll of at least five from the blast triggered by a lightning strike on the military munitions dump at the Brigade Army Base. Government spokesman Lambert Mende on Friday told reporters that lightning had ignited a fire in the munitions dump and set off the explosion. A witness speaking by telephone said he had seen the bodies of a woman and her child in the local hospital, as well as several people with amputated limbs. On Saturday, witnesses said the explosion had burned or destroyed houses within a radius of dozens of meters, leaving a crater about 1.5m deep.
CAMBODIA
Nine dead in wedding attack
A grenade was lobbed at a wedding party in Kampong Thom Province on Saturday, killing nine people and wounding 30 others, including the bride and groom, officials said yesterday. The attack is thought to have been carried out by a man who is in love with the bride. The grenade was thrown as guests danced, provincial military police chief Horng Thul told reporters by telephone. “They were happily dancing when the grenade exploded,” he said, adding that two girls, aged seven and 14, were among the victims. He said the bride suffered a broken thigh after she was hit by shrapnel, while the groom suffered a hand injury.
CHINA
Blaze razes ancient village
A fire has destroyed more than 100 homes in a village built three centuries ago, state media said yesterday, the third blaze to ravage a cultural site in weeks. The blazes, which all erupted in the southwest of the country, often burned down old wooden structures. The latest fire broke out at Baojing Dong Village in Guizhou Province late on Saturday and took more than four hours to put out, Xinhua news agency said. The area was “one of China’s most complete” settlements of the Dong ethnic minority, known for its “well-preserved” dwellings, it added. Nearly 2,000 people live there, but no casualties have yet been reported. The cause of the blaze remains under investigation, Xinhua said. There are more than 200 similar settlements are in the same prefecture, Qiandongnan, and many have suffered from fires, local housing official Gu Huaxian was quoted by Xinhua as saying last month.
AFGHANISTAN
Taliban bomb military bus
A Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up near a military bus in Kabul yesterday, killing four people in the latest attack in the capital. Two military officers and two civilians died when the bomber, who was on foot, targeted the bus taking Ministry of Defense staff to work. “There are four dead. Two civilians, one of them female and two military officers. It was a suicide bombing,” ministry spokesman General Zahir Azimi said. At least 22 people were injured, including two civilians, he added. A Taliban spokesman using a recognized Twitter account claimed responsibility for the blast shortly after 7am. The militants claimed that 27 soldiers were killed or wounded, although they regularly exaggerate death tolls. The attack followed an improvised explosive device blast on Saturday in which two people were wounded.
ITALY
Pig’s head sent to synagogue
Offences against Jewish targets in Rome, including a pig’s head sent to the city’s main synagogue, caused outrage on Saturday in the run-up to International Holocaust Remembrance Day today. “This is a vile and cowardly act which offends the Jewish community and all Romans on the eve of the memorial day,” Nicola Zingaretti, president of Lazio, the region in which Rome is located. The pig’s head was sent in a parcel to Rome’s Grand Synagogue on Friday and similar packages were also addressed to the Israeli embassy in Rome and to a museum holding an exhibition on the Nazi Holocaust. Officials said that anti-Semitic graffiti were also scrawled on the walls of a municipal building in the city. There was no immediate word on who was behind the acts, but police were investigating.
CUBA
Dissident arrested
Leading dissident Jose Daniel Ferrer has been arrested after meeting with European diplomats in Havana, activists said on Saturday. Elizardo Sanchez, founder and leader of the illegal but tolerated Cuban Human Rights and National Reconciliation Commission, said Ferrer was arrested late on Friday and that it was unclear where he had been taken. Ferrer lives in Santiago de Cuba, where he leads the Patriotic Cuban Union dissident group. “He was detained late Friday near my home, where he had been a guest,” Sanchez said. “We have no idea where he is,” he said, blasting his friend’s detention as “arbitrary.” Opposition leaders had expressed fear that the government would carry out “preventive detentions” ahead of this week’s meetings of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.
UNITED STATES
Execution method disputed
The prolonged execution of an inmate in Ohio during which he repeatedly gasped and snorted amounted to cruel and unusual punishment which should not be allowed to happen again, the inmate’s family said in a federal lawsuit. The lawsuit, filed late on Friday, also alleges that Lake Forest, Illinois-based Hospira, the manufacturer of the medications used in the lethal injection illegally allowed them to be used for an execution and should be prohibited from making them available for capital punishment. Dennis McGuire “repeated cycles of snorting, gurgling and arching his back, appearing to writhe in pain,” the lawsuit said. McGuire’s execution on Jan. 16 lasted 26 minutes, the longest since the state resumed putting inmates to death in 1999, according to an Associated Press analysis of all 53 execution logs maintained by the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
UNITED KINGDOM
Aiding rebels an offence
Britons traveling to Syria to help rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could be arrested on their return, a senior police chief warned on Saturday. Peter Fahy, head of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said there was “huge concern” about Britons, including a rising number of youngsters, fighting in Syria and becoming radicalized by hardline Islamists. Police have already arrested 16 people on suspicion of terrorism offences in Syria this year, some as young as 17, compared to 24 arrests in all of last year. Most of the Britons involved in attacks in the UK, including the four suicide bombers who committed the 2005 London bombings that killed 52 people, as well as their co-conspirators, were reported to have received training in camps in countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
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