SOMALIA
Bombing toll climbs to 39
The toll has climbed to 39 dead in an unusually deadly suicide bombing at a Mogadishu market on Sunday, rescue workers said yesterday. The suicide car bomber struck a busy market in the Madina neighborhood, the explosion ripping through shoppers, stalls and vehicles. No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack, which also wounded 27 people. President-elect Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, who is due to be sworn in tomorrow, has offered a US$100,000 reward for information on who carried out the attack.
Photo: Reuters
PHILIPPINES
One killed in sea attack
Gunmen near Baguan Island killed one crewman of a Vietnamese vessel and abducted six in what appeared to be the latest attack by pirates in the area, the coast guard said yesterday. Coast guard personnel and marines rescued 17 Vietnamese who were part of the 25-man crew of MV Giang Hai, which was attacked on Sunday evening about 31km north of Pearl Bank in southernmost Tawi-Tawi province. An investigation was under way and the coast guard launched a pursuit in coordination with the military and police, coast guard spokesman Commander Armand Balilo said.
PHILIPPINES
Fourteen die in bus crash
Officials in the town of Tanay yesterday said at least 14 people, most of them college students on a camping trip, were killed when their rented bus lost its brakes on a downhill road and slammed into a post. Town safety officer Darlito Bati Jr says 10 of the victims died on the spot and four died in two hospitals following the accident in the hilly town in Rizal province east of Manila. More than 40 others were injured and taken to hospitals, and several are listed in critical condition, Bati said.
CAMBODIA
Political party bill wins vote
The legislature has approved amending a law governing political parties that would allow the government to apply to the courts to have a party dissolved, an act clearly aimed at the sole opposition group in parliament. The opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party boycotted yesterday’s 90-minute debate on the bill and the subsequent vote that saw all 66 lawmakers from the ruling Cambodian People’s Party vote in favor. It now needs approval from the ruling party-controlled Senate, a simple formality.
UNITED STATES
Animal rights theorist dies
Philosopher and prominent animal rights theorist Tom Regan has died at age 78, media reports on Sunday said. Professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Regan wrote The Case for Animal Rights, a 1983 book that proved seminal for the movement. In it he argued that if people value humans for more than their ability to be rational actors, they must also value non-human life. A spokesman for the family was reported as saying that Regan died on Friday in North Carolina after battling pneumonia. In France, the Brigitte Bardot Foundation, which supports animal rights, called Regan the “principal theorist of animal rights.” “His analysis is the most impressive and thorough ever produced,” the foundation wrote on Twitter.
CANADA
Refugees flee the US
At least 22 refugees and migrants fled the US over the weekend, sneaking across the border into Manitoba to request asylum, authorities said on Sunday.
The people, mostly from Africa, crossed the border on foot overnight, said Greg Janzen, a local official in the city of Emerson. Eight others had arrived on Friday. Emerson, 120km south of Winnipeg and close to the US states of North Dakota and Minnesota, has seen its porous border — in many areas with no official crossings — drawing greater numbers of asylum seekers since US President Donald Trump’s travel ban.
UNITED STATES
Hitler’s telephone auctioned
Adolf Hitler’s personal telephone sold at auction on Sunday for US$243,000, the auction house Alexander Historical Auctions announced. Originally a black Bakelite telephone, later painted crimson and engraved with Hitler’s name, the relic was found in the Nazi leader’s Berlin bunker in 1945 following the regime’s defeat. The Siemens rotary telephone is embossed with a swastika and the eagle symbolic of the Third Reich. Russian officers gave the device to British Brigadier Sir Ralph Rayner during a tour of the bunker shortly after Germany’s surrender. Rayner’s son, who inherited the telephone, put it up for sale.
ITALY
Milan palm trees set ablaze
A cluster of palm trees next to Milan’s Duomo was set ablaze early on Sunday as a dispute over the use of non-native plants at one of the nation’s most celebrated cathedrals took on a racist tinge. Three of the 42 trees went up in flames in the overnight attack, although only one suffered extensive damage to its trunk. The incident followed protests on Saturday organized by the anti-immigrant Northern League party and CasaPound, a radical right-wing movement. Demonstrators waving the Italian flag stood in front of a large banner alleging the “Africanization” of the historic piazza. The palms, some of them 5m tall, appeared on Thursday in the shadow of the 14th-century Gothic cathedral.
UNITED STATES
Yiannopoulus Web-shamed
Right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulus was trying to clarify past comments on relationships between boys and older men after a conservative site posted a collection of edited video clips that set social media abuzz. After the polarizing Breitbart News editor was invited this weekend to speak at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference sparked a backlash, the Reagan Battalion tweeted video clips on Sunday in which Yiannopoulus discusses Jews, sexual consent, statutory rape, child abuse and homosexuality. Yiannopoulus on Facebook blamed deceptive editing and his own “sloppy phrasing” for any indication he supported pedophilia. The British author says he spoke of his own relationship when he was 17 with a man who was 29.
UNITED STATES
LA: Land of the gridlocked
When it comes to getting stuck in traffic on the way to and from work, Los Angeles leads the world. Drivers in the metropolis spent 104 hours each driving in congestion during peak travel periods last year. That topped second-place Moscow at 91 hours and third-place New York at 89, according to a traffic scorecard compiled by Inrix, a transportation analytics firm. The US had half the cities on Inrix’s list of the top 10 most congested areas in the world and was the most congested developed country on the planet, Inrix found.
Yemen’s separatist leader has vowed to keep working for an independent state in the country’s south, in his first social media post since he disappeared earlier this month after his group briefly seized swathes of territory. Aidarous al-Zubaidi’s United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces last month captured two Yemeni provinces in an offensive that was rolled back by Saudi strikes and Riyadh’s allied forces on the ground. Al-Zubaidi then disappeared after he failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks earlier this month, with Saudi Arabia accusing him of fleeing to Abu Dhabi, while supporters insisted he was
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
The Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it has filed a diplomatic protest against a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman over a social media post that included cartoonish images of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela and an embassy official had been trading barbs since last week over issues concerning the disputed South China Sea. The crucial waterway, which Beijing claims historic rights to despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, has been the site of repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Tarriela’s Facebook post on Wednesday included a photo of him giving a
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Sunday announced a deal with the chief of Kurdish-led forces that includes a ceasefire, after government troops advanced across Kurdish-held areas of the country’s north and east. Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi said he had agreed to the deal to avoid a broader war. He made the decision after deadly clashes in the Syrian city of Raqa on Sunday between Kurdish-led forces and local fighters loyal to Damascus, and fighting this month between the Kurds and government forces. The agreement would also see the Kurdish administration and forces integrate into the state after months of stalled negotiations on
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