ISRAEL
One dead, 14 hurt in blasts
Two blasts yesterday went off near bus stops in Jerusalem, killing one person and injuring at least 14, in what police said were suspected attacks by Palestinians. The first explosion occurred near a bus stop on the edge of the city, where commuters usually crowd. The second went off in Ramot, a neighborhood in the city’s north. Police said one person died from their injuries and rescue service Magen David Adom said four people were seriously wounded. Police said their initial findings showed that explosive devices were placed at the two sites. The twin blasts occurred amid the buzz of rush-hour traffic and police closed part of a main highway leading out of the city where the fist explosion went off. Video footage from shortly after the first blast showed debris strewn along the sidewalk as the wail of ambulance sirens blared. “It was a crazy explosion. There is damage everywhere here,” Yosef Haim Gabay, a medic who was at the scene when the first blast went off, told Israeli Army Radio. “I saw people with wounds bleeding all over the place.” Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, praised the perpetrators, calling it a heroic operation, but stopped short of claiming responsibility. “The occupation is reaping the price of its crimes and aggression against our people,” Hamas spokesman Abd al-Latif al-Qanua said.
TURKEY
Earthquake sparks panic
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake hit a town in the northwest of the country early yesterday, causing damage to some buildings and widespread panic. About 35 people were injured, mostly while trying to flee homes. The earthquake was centered in the town of Golkaya in Duzce Province, about 200km east of Istanbul, the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency said. It struck at 04:08am and was felt in Istanbul, in the capital, Ankara, and other parts of the region. Dozens of aftershocks were reported, including one magnitude 4.3 aftershock. The quake woke people from their sleep and many rushed out of buildings in panic. At least 35 people were treated in hospitals for injuries, mostly sustained during the panic, including from jumping from balconies or windows. One of them was in a serious condition, Minister of the Interior Suleyman Soylu told NTV television. Power was cut in the region as a safety measure, the minister said. The quake demolished the exterior cladding and parts of the roof of a courthouse in Duzce, HaberTurk television reported. Among other damage, a two-story shop collapsed on a narrow street, it said.
CHINA
‘Avatar’ release allowed
The long-awaited sequel to director James Cameron’s blockbuster Avatar is to be released in Chinese cinemas on Dec. 16, 20th Century Studios said yesterday. Avatar: The Way of Water would be released on the same day as its global release, the studio wrote on social media. It is one of the few foreign films to gain access to the market in the past few months, with others including the latest film in the Minions franchise and Sony Pictures’ Where the Crawdads Sing. Foreign movies have long struggled to gain release dates in the country due to strict quotas on the number of international films allowed to show, while many are blocked due to content regulators deem unseemly. Hollywood blockbusters have recently had a particularly hard time getting clearance. The six latest Marvel movies did not make an appearance earlier this year, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was also denied a release.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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