CHINA
House fire kills at least 22
A pre-dawn fire in a two-story house in Jiangsu Province’s Changshu yesterday killed 22 people and injured three, authorities said. The Changshu City Government said in a brief social media post that the fire broke out about 4:30am. It said authorities put out the fire and finished cleaning the scene. The cause remains under investigation. An earlier report by Xinhua news agency said more than 20 people lived in the house, citing unnamed sources. Telephone calls to the city’s publicity department were unanswered.
DR CONGO
Foreign journalists attacked
Armed men attacked a group of journalists and park rangers in a remote wildlife reserve overnight, and a US journalist and two guards were missing, a local official said on Saturday. The group attacked comprised the US and two Irish journalists and 13 park rangers. They were in the town of Mambasa in Okapi Wildlife Reserve, Mambasa Territory Administrator Alfred Bongwalanga told reporters by telephone. The two Irish journalists and all but two of the rangers had been found and were safe, he added.
UNITED KINGDOM
Boy held for acid attacks
Police on Saturday said they had charged a 16-year-old boy with 15 offenses following five related acid attacks in London two days earlier. The charges include grievous bodily harm, possession of an item to discharge a noxious substance and robbery. The boy is due to appear before Stratford Youth Court on today, London’s Metropolitan Police said in a statement. On Friday, British police arrested two teenagers after five acid attacks against moped riders in less than 90 minutes across east London on Thursday left several people with facial burns, including one with horrific injuries. Police said the investigation was ongoing
TURKEY
President voices message
Mobile phone users in Turkey were surprised to hear a voice message by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan when placing a call around midnight on Saturday on the anniversary of the failed coup of July 15 last year. After dialing a number, instead of hearing a dialtone users heard a voice message from Erdogan congratulating them on the national holiday of “democracy and unity” that marks the coup’s defeat. Only after Erdogan’s message did the dialtone begin. “As president, I send congratulations on the July 15 National Day of Democracy and Unity and wish the martyrs mercy and the heroes [of the defeat of the coup] health and well-being,” the message read by Erdogan said.
GERMANY
Jets escort airliner
A South Korean airliner headed for Switzerland was escorted to Stuttgart Airport by two German military jets after losing radio contact, authorities said. Officials determined after the Boeing 777 landed safely on Saturday evening that there was a problem with the aircraft’s radio equipment, police said, They said yesterday that they received about 250 calls from residents because of sonic booms caused by the two fighter jets. Stuttgart Airport was cited by the Deutsche Presse-Agentur as saying that the 211 passengers on the Korean Air flight from Seoul to Zurich had to spend the night on cots in a terminal because it was not possible to organize buses at the late hour and there were not enough hotel beds available. The passengers were taken to Switzerland by bus early yesterday.
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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