INDIA
Search for missing trekkers
Rescuers are searching for four people from Britain, two from the US, an Australian and an Indian who went missing while climbing Nanda Devi in the Himalayas after reports of a heavy avalanche. The eight failed to return to base camp following their attempt to reach a summit at 6,477m on the nation’s second-highest peak on a previously unclimbed route. Authorities on Saturday sent out a search team of up to 20 people on foot, but they were not expected to reach the group’s last known camp for three days. An air force helicopter was scheduled to make a reconnaissance flight yesterday.
JAPAN
Train accident hurts 14
Fourteen passengers were injured after a driverless five-car train in Yokohama went in the wrong direction and crashed into a buffer stop, police said yesterday. Media reported that some injuries — the first resulting from an accident involving an automated train in 30 years — appeared to be serious, but not life-threatening. The train hit the buffer stop at Shin-Sugita station after traveling the wrong way for about 20m, Akihiko Mikami, president of the train operator, said in a midnight Saturday news conference.
The station is a terminal of the self-driving Kanazawa Seaside Line in Yokohama The line has shut down the line and it was uncertain when services would be resumed, Mikami said.
RUSSIA
TNT plant blast injures 79
The Ministry of Health said 79 people were injured on Saturday in an explosion in a plant manufacturing TNT in Dzerzhinsk. An investigation is under way, but the cause of the blast has not been determined. The ministry said 38 employees at the plant and 41 residents sought treatment after the blast and 15 were hospitalized, one in serious condition. The blast broke windows in about 180 residential buildings near the plant, the state news agency Tass reported, citing city authorities.
UNITED KINGDOM
Bomb found on officer’s car
Police in Northern Ireland discovered a bomb under a police officer’s car in Belfast on Saturday that they said was probably planted by militant nationalists intent on killing one of their officers The suspicious object was detected in the east of the city on Saturday and declared a viable improvised explosive device following examination by munitions officers. “Our belief is that this attempted murder was carried out by violent dissident republicans. They don’t care who they attack, they don’t care who they kill. They are simply anti-peace and anti-democracy,” Sean Wright, head of the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s Terrorism Investigation Unit, said in a statement.
FRENCH POLYNESIA
Cocaine haul found on boat
Police have seized 436kg of cocaine hidden on a yacht and arrested four men, the Papeete public prosecutor said on Saturday. Officers moved in on the boat at the Apataki atoll, in the Tuamotu Archipelago to the east of Tahiti, after spotting the vessel, which had sailed from Panama with four men of Italian and Peruvian nationalities onboard. An initial inspection of the boat on Wednesday found a compartment in the infrastructure containing 341 bricks and packages of cocaine weighing about 341kg, prosecutor Herve Leroy said. A further inspection after the boat was brought to Papeete found more drugs. The four men face up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
DIPLOMATIC THAW: The Canadian prime minister’s China visit and improved Beijing-Ottawa ties raised lawyer Zhang Dongshuo’s hopes for a positive outcome in the retrial China has overturned the death sentence of Canadian Robert Schellenberg, a Canadian official said on Friday, in a possible sign of a diplomatic thaw as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney seeks to boost trade ties with Beijing. Schellenberg’s lawyer, Zhang Dongshuo (張東碩), yesterday confirmed China’s Supreme People’s Court struck down the sentence. Schellenberg was detained on drug charges in 2014 before China-Canada ties nosedived following the 2018 arrest in Vancouver of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟). That arrest infuriated Beijing, which detained two Canadians — Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig — on espionage charges that Ottawa condemned as retaliatory. In January
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
SHOW OF SUPPORT: The move showed that aggression toward Greenland is a question for Europe and Canada, and the consequences are global, not just Danish, experts said Canada and France, which adamantly oppose US President Donald Trump’s wish to control Greenland, were to open consulates in the Danish autonomous territory’s capital yesterday, in a strong show of support for the local government. Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has repeatedly insisted that Washington needs to control the strategic, mineral-rich Arctic island for security reasons. Trump last month backed off his threats to seize Greenland after saying he had struck a “framework” deal with NATO chief Mark Rutte to ensure greater US influence. A US-Denmark-Greenland working group has been established to discuss ways to meet Washington’s security concerns
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