NEPAL
85 dead after monsoon
Rescuers yesterday struggled to recover bodies after monsoon rains swept away houses, killing at least 85 people and sparking fears of a cholera outbreak, officials said. Torrential rain last week led to multiple landslides and flooding, damaging roads across the western plains and forcing officials to use helicopters to rescue stranded people and deliver emergency supplies. As the weather cleared yesterday, improving visibility after three days of incessant rain, army officials ran helicopter sorties to evacuate about 20,000 people stranded in badly-hit western districts, national disaster management chief Yadav Prasad Koirala said. “We are very concerned about a possible outbreak of cholera due to the bodies lying underwater,” he said. As water levels slowly recede, rescuers have started moving people from their damaged homes into temporary shelters, but large areas remained submerged, preventing helicopters from landing so workers can search for 113 people still missing, Koirala said.
CHINA
Sichuan rocked by quake
A moderate 5.1 magnitude earthquake struck Sichuan Province early yesterday, the US Geological Survey said, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage. The quake struck at 6:07am at a depth of 10km and its epicenter was 2km southwest of Xiluodu and 96km from Zhaotong in Yunnan Province, where a quake two weeks ago killed 615 people and injured 3,143.
IRAN
IAEA boss holds talks
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Yukiya Amano held talks in Tehran yesterday ahead of next week’s deadline for Tehran to answer decade-old allegations of past nuclear weapons research. Amano held morning talks with Foreign Minister Mohammaf Javad Zarif before meeting President Hassan Rouhani, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported. State TV said Amano also will meet Atomic Energy Organization head Ali Akbar Salehi. World powers are hoping to reach a comprehensive deal on Tehran’s nuclear program by Nov. 24. Tehran must give IAEA information about its research into nuclear weapons by Monday next week.
UAE
Dubai bars pierced man
Rolf Buchholz, the world’s most pierced man, has been barred from Dubai, where he was turned back at the airport on his way to a hotel appearance, the local daily Al-Emarat Al-Youm reported yesterday. Airport officials gave no reason for refusing entry to the 53-year-old German, who sports 453 piercings plus two horns on his forehead, the newspaper said. They put him on a flight to Istanbul, it said. A spokesman for the hotel where Buchholz was scheduled to appear said its management had failed “despite all its attempts” to win permission for him to enter the emirate, the report added. Vowing never to return to Dubai though his luggage was still there, Buchholz said on Twitter: “At the end I got an answer why I can’t enter Dubai. The immigration thought I am Black Magic.” He was recognized by Guinness World Records in 2012 as the world’s most pierced man.
AFGHANISTAN
Truck crash kills 32
A truck loaded with people and animals crashed in northwestern Badghis Province on Saturday, killing 32 people, an official said yesterday. Badghis Governor Ahmadullah Alizai said that the incident happened in a mountainous rural area of Ab Kamari District.
MEXICO
Artist Olek in hot water
A Polish artist famed for slipping crocheted covers around unlikely objects has gotten into hot water for slipping her brightly colored work around underwater sculptures near Cancun. Agata Oleksiak, who uses the name Olek, said she intervened at the Cancun Underwater Museum this month to call attention to the dangers facing species such as the whale shark. However, museum director Jaime Gonzalez said she did so without permission, and may herself have damaged marine life growing on the sculptures in an environmentally protected area. Gonzalez said prosecutors are preparing to lodge charges against her. In the past, she has put crocheted covers around a bus and a Wall Street statue of a bull.
BRAZIL
Inmate gives rooster monitor
An inmate on supervised release put his electronic monitoring bracelet on an unsuspecting rooster, which he locked in a chicken coop, and then sneaked off to sell drugs, media reports said on Saturday. The ruse was discovered during a routine check in Porto Alegre of a drug sales spot on Wednesday night, when police detained Isaac Selau, 29, on suspicion of selling drugs and illegal possession of a firearm. When they ran his name, they discovered he was under house arrest and required to remain at home in the evenings. They then went to his home, where they came across the bizarre sight of a rooster with a monitoring device around its neck. Police said it was the first time they had found an electronic monitoring bracelet on an animal. At Selau’s house, police seized cocaine, marijuana and a high-powered scale. The head of the electronic surveillance unit for the prisons in Rio Grande do Sul, Cesar Moreira, said the system had detected Selau had removed his bracelet on Monday and had flagged him as a fugitive.
UNITED STATES
Three stabbed on subway
Police say a drunken passenger has stabbed three men on a subway platform in New York City. The altercation happened early on Saturday as an uptown No. 6 train arrived at Grand Central Terminal. Police say the fight started when an intoxicated man named Ivan DeLeon bumped into a child while exiting the train. They say the 38-year-old DeLeon stabbed one man in the chest, one in the arm and one in the stomach. The child was not harmed. The three men are being treated at Bellevue Hospital. The man who was stabbed in the chest is in critical, but stable condition. The other two suffered less serious injuries. DeLeon was arrested on charges of assault, menacing and criminal possession of a weapon.
COLOMBIA
FARC kidnap suspect caught
Police captured a suspected Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebel accused of participating in the kidnapping of three Americans held hostage from 2003 to 2008, authorities said on Saturday. Duverney Ospina, also known as “Giovanny,” allegedly joined the FARC a decade ago and was the confidante of Hernan Velasquez, or “El Paisa,” a leader within the leftist rebel group, a police statement said. Ospina was detained in the southern city of Florencia. Police said there were 19 warrants and six standing convictions against Ospina for aggravated murder, kidnapping, torture, terrorism, rebellion, drug trafficking, making military weapons for private use and a jailbreak. Authorities accuse him of helping kidnap three US contractors — Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves and Tom Howes — on Feb. 13, 2003, after their plane was shot down. They were rescued on July 2, 2008.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
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