CHINA
Coal mine accident kills 12
Twelve people were killed in a coal mine accident in Jilin Province, state media reported yesterday, the latest incident in the country’s notoriously dangerous industry. Coal gas flooded a colliery in Baishan, killing the miners, Xinhua news agency said. One was rescued and the cause of the accident on Sunday was being investigated.
CHINA
MH370 relatives file suit
Relatives of a dozen passengers aboard missing flight MH370 began filing suits against Malaysia Airlines at a Beijing court yesterday, a day ahead of the second anniversary of its disappearance and a legal deadline to do so. The flight, with 239 people — including 153 Chinese citizens — on board, vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, and authorities said it went down in the southern Indian Ocean. Under international agreements, families have two years to sue over air accidents. However, many families were “deeply conflicted” over the decision to go to court, said lawyer Zhang Qihuai (張起淮), whose Lanpeng firm represents the group who were filing suit yesterday. Even while suing for the wrongful deaths of their loved ones, many express beliefs that the passengers are still alive, perhaps being held at an unknown location.
PAKISTAN
Bomber kills eight at court
A suicide attack at a court compound killed at least eight people in the northwest yesterday, officials said, the latest in a series of attacks in areas around the volatile Mohmand tribal area. Senior police official Sohail Khalid said that three police personnel were among at least eight people killed, and 27 others were wounded in the blast. Saeed Wazir, another police official, said that the attacker targeted the court building in the town of Shabqadar.
INDIA
Mob attacks church
Police arrested three men after a gang attacked a church during Sunday Mass, an investigator said, in the latest attack against Christians in the religiously diverse country. Women and children were injured after a group of about 50 men barged into the church in Kachna village near Raipur, the state capital of Chhattisgarh. Witnesses said the crowd of young men stormed into the church chanting slogans and demanding that the church be shut down. “About 40-50 people, who had covered their faces with cloth, attacked the gathering and damaged the chair and musical instruments,” local Shiv Kumar said.
AUSTRALIA
Facebook ‘rat-biter’ charged
A man known as “Mad Matt” appeared in court yesterday after filming himself allegedly biting the head off a live rat and posting the video on Facebook. Matthew Maloney, 24, was charged with animal cruelty following a raid by Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals investigators after the bizarre stunt in January. He appeared briefly in the Brisbane Magistrates Court, making no plea, with the case adjourned until April 6, a court official said. The video shows Maloney storming into a room, allegedly biting off the rat’s head and washing it down with three shots of vodka. He then gets punched in the face and has a chair broken over his back before saying “beat that.” The clip, which remains on his “Mad Matts vids” Facebook page and been viewed more than 230,000 times, was reportedly an attempt to create a disturbing new social-media challenge.
IRAN
Billionaire to appeal
Billionaire Babak Zanjani, who was sentenced to death in an oil fraud case, is going to appeal the verdict, his lawyer said. “The sentence is not final and there is room to dispute it,” Rasoul Kouhpayezadeh told the Iranian Students News Agency on Sunday. “We will for sure appeal.” Zanjani, who has denied all wrongdoing, was accused of embezzling US$2.7 billion from the state-run National Iranian Oil Co during transactions intended to circumvent international sanctions on crude exports, according to state-run media. Officials said Zanjani used the Tajikistan branch of his own bank, First Islamic Investment Bank, to funnel the money out of the nation.
UNITED KINGDOM
Bomb-making cache found
Police in Northern Ireland on Sunday announced the discovery of a large cache of bomb-making materials, explosives and partially constructed devices, raising fears of an attack in the province. The cache were found buried in plastic barrels in a forest park in a predominantly unionist area near Larne, 50km north of Belfast. In a separate incident on Sunday, a suspicious object was found in a residential area of Derry, leading to the evacuation of several houses, a day after two explosive devices were also found and defused in west Belfast. Police have warned that some “people within dissident republican groupings” wanted to mark the centenary of Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rising with violence.
UNITED STATES
Hogan-Gawker trial opens
Gawker yesterday began the legal fight of its life with opening statements in a lawsuit between the New York media company and the mustachioed wrestling and reality TV star Hulk Hogan over the publication of a sex tape involving him. At issue is a post Gawker ran in October 2012 that included a video showing the wrestler, then 58, appearing to have sex with a woman called Heather Clem, who at the time was married to Hogan’s best friend, talk radio DJ Bubba “the Love Sponge” Clem. The post included the video and an essay describing the intercourse in not entirely flattering terms. Hogan is asking for US$100 million in damages for defamation, emotional pain and loss of privacy.
UKRAINE
Protesters attack embassy
Angry protesters on Sunday threw stones and eggs at the Russian embassy in Kiev, breaking several of its windows, after earlier smashing cars and throwing smoke pellets as anger boiled over at Moscow’s refusal to free a hunger-striking pilot. Hundreds of demonstrators rallied outside the embassy to demand the release of Nadiya Savchenko, a 34-year-old pilot who is on trial in Russia for the killing of two journalists. Savchenko began a hunger strike on Thursday last week, rejecting both food and water, to protest delays in her trial.
NORWAY
Police seek fish’s owner
Police in the northwestern town of Bodo are taking care of a goldfish as they seek its owner, news agency NTB reports. Officers found the goldfish in a jam jar at the Nordlandshall indoor soccer stadium and decided to take it back to the police station because they could not find the owner. Ina Selfors, spokeswoman for the Nordland police district, said that somebody likely had bought the goldfish and taken it to the stadium and forgot it there. Selfors says she hopes the owner will contact the police, adding that until then the fish “will stay in the jam jar and keep us company.”
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
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
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