JAPAN
Petition opposes demolition
Thousands of people have signed an online petition against the planned demolition of two early 20th-century buildings that remained intact after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima devastated the city. A local government official yesterday confirmed that they had received the petition signed by 12,000 people calling for the preservation of the buildings that stand 2.7km from the 1945 blast. The three-story red-brick buildings are part of a cluster of four built in 1913 and used to manufacture military uniforms.
CHINA
Mine blast kills 14 workers
Fourteen miners were killed yesterday in a coal and gas blast at a mine in the country’s southwest, authorities said. Two people were still trapped underground after the blast at Guanglong coal mine in Anlong county, Guizhou Province, the Southwest Guizhou Autonomous Prefecture government said. Seven workers were lifted to safety after the accident and rescue work was ongoing, local authorities said.
THAILAND
Police hunt freed killer
Police are hunting a convicted serial killer in connection with another murder months after he was released for good behavior, authorities said yesterday. Somkid Pumpuang was sentenced to life in 2005 for the killing of five women believed to be involved in the sex and nightlife industry. However, the 55-year-old was deemed an “excellent prisoner” and let free in May, the corrections department said in a statement. Seven months later authorities want to rearrest him in connection with the murder of a 51-year-old hotel maid in the country’s northeast. Several police stations in the area are cooperating in the hunt for the killer, a police officer said.
AUSTRALIA
Bomb plotters sentenced
Two brothers were yesterday handed lengthy jail terms for plotting to bring down a Sydney to Abu Dhabi flight with a bomb carried in a meat grinder by their unwitting brother. Australian-Lebanese brothers Khaled and Mahmoud Khayat were convicted of terrorism offenses for trying to bomb an Etihad Airways passenger jet in July 2017 under instructions from the Islamic State group. Khaled was sentenced to 40 years with a minimum of 30 years without parole, while Mahmoud received 36 years’ jail time and was ordered to serve at least 27. “The conspiracy to which both offenders were parties, plainly envisaged that a large number of people would be killed,” judge Christine Adamson said.
AUSTRALIA
Boy’s driving skills save him
A 12-year-old boy and his dog escaped a fire that was lapping his family’s farm house by grabbing the keys to his brother’s pickup truck and driving to safety. Lucas Sturrock was home alone on Sunday after his father and brother had gone out to fight a fire in Mogumber, 128km northwest of Perth, when the blaze approached his house. Realizing the fire was approaching too fast to escape to the rendezvous point designated by his father, Sturrock grabbed the family dog and headed off, police said. Emergency workers found Sturrock and the dog in the truck at the side of a road, unharmed. “It was great he had the driving skills to get out of there,” Police Sergeant Michael Daley told Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC). “It is fantastic we found him and got him out of danger.” Ivan Sturrock, Lucas’ father, said his son had learned to drive when he was seven. “We taught him to drive ... just in case things like this do happen and I was quite proud of him,” Ivan Sturrock told ABC.
AFGHANISTAN
Bomb kills 10 civilians
A roadside bombing killed at least 10 civilians yesterday morning, while explosives attached to a bicycle detonated near a police vehicle, wounding at least 18 people, officials said. Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said that the roadside bombing took place in eastern Khost Province, in the district of Ali Sher. He said three children, two women and five men were killed. The blast happened when the vehicle they were riding in detonated the bomb, Rahimi said. The other blast, in northern Balkh Province, took place at one of the busiest intersections of the provincial capital, Mazar-i Sharif, said Adil Shah Adil, the spokesman for the provincial police chief. There were six traffic policemen among the 18 wounded, the rest were civilians, he said. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the two attacks, but officials blamed the Taliban.
UNITED STATES
Carey’s 1994 song tops chart
A quarter-century after releasing her holiday classic that has become one of the season’s love-to-hate, hate-to-love cliches, Mariah Carey has finally pushed ll I Want for Christmas Is You to top the charts for the first time. “We did it,” the diva said on Monday in a tweet that featured several emojis, including a face with happy tears. Many social media users voiced shock that the inescapable pop juggernaut had not already jingled its way to the top, but when the de facto Holiday Queen originally released the global hit in 1994 as part of her Merry Christmas album, Billboard’s rules did not allow it to compete on the Hot 100 chart, because it was not commercially available as a single.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees