■THAILAND
Elephant gets artificial leg
PHOTO: AP
An elephant who stepped on a land mine 10 years ago was fitted on Saturday for a permanent artificial leg. Motola became a symbol of the plight of today’s elephants, and her injury sparked international sympathy and donations. Experts were making a cast of the 48-year-old pachyderm’s injured left front leg for a plastic prosthetic limb, which was attached Saturday. “I do hope she will accept the new leg. It would be wonderful to see Motola and Baby Mosha walking together side-by-side,” said Soraida Salwala, secretary general of the Friends of the Asian Elephant, a non-governmental group. Mosha, also a land mine victim, became the world’s first elephant with an artificial leg, attached in 2007.
■INDONESIA
Quake hits Sumatra
A strong earthquake struck off Sumatra Island yesterday, but no tsunami warning was issued, the country’s meteorological agency said. The US Geological Survey measured the quake at 7.0 and said it struck near the Mentawai islands off Sumatra island at a depth of 32km. The tremors toppled some telephone poles in the West Sumatra capital of Padang, but no injuries have been reported. The epicenter was 43km southeast of Siberut island off Sumatra’s west coast, the meteorological agency said in a text message. “There are no reports of damage or injuries,” Fauzi, head of the seismology center at the agency, said. He said no tsunami alert had been issued.
■CHINA
Tibet tourism soars
A total of 1.2 million tourists visited Tibet last month — a record for July — state media said yesterday, as travelers returned to the Himalayan region 17 months after deadly unrest there. The domestic and foreign tourists generated revenue of 1.1 billion yuan (US$160 million) in the month, nearly double the amount for July last year, the official Tibet Daily reported. We “achieved the highest performance in terms of the number of tourists and total income in July in the history of tourism development in Tibet,” the report said.
■RUSSIA
Police killed in Dagestan
Two policemen were killed in separate sniper attacks in the violent republic of Dagestan on Saturday, authorities said, the latest in three days of bloodshed that has claimed more than 20 lives in the North Caucasus. The first of the shootings took place late on Saturday morning at a police post near the central square of Dagestan’s capital, Makhachkala, the local Interior Ministry said. One officer died. Another officer was killed in an attack at a traffic police post on the outskirts of the city, the ministry said.
■INDONESIA
Gunmen fire at bus
Unidentified gunmen fired at a bus on a road leading to Freeport McMoran Copper & Gold Inc’s mine in Papua Province, police said yesterday. It was the second time since Wednesday that a Freeport bus has been fired upon and follows a series of shootings last month, in which an Australian technical expert and a Freeport security guard were killed and several others injured.
■KUWAIT
Wedding blaze kills dozens
Forty-one women and children were killed and dozens injured when a fire ripped through a packed wedding party, triggering a panicked stampede, officials said yesterday. Health Minister Hilal al-Sayer reported that 76 people had been injured with various degrees of burns, some seriously, in the disaster. The fire broke out late on Saturday night in a large tent reserved for women at a wedding ceremony in Jahra, which lies to the west of the capital Kuwait City. There were fears the death toll might rise, with police talking of a “provisional toll,” while Sayer said many of the injured had been admitted to intensive care units of various hospitals in the country. Officials said rescue teams were still sifting through the debris and charred items, searching for more possible casualties, KUNA reported. Officials said the exact cause of the fire was not yet known and that an inquiry had been launched to determine what happened. Many of the victims had fallen during a stampede after the blaze broke out.
■ISRAEL
Brutal killing shocks nation
Locals were in shock yesterday after the brutal murder of a 59-year-old father and the assault of his wife and daughter by a group of drunken youths on a Tel Aviv beach. The killing is the latest in a spate of cases in just two weeks that has seen 10 people murdered in often grisly circumstances, their bodies mutilated or burned, sparking alarm and topping the front pages of local newspapers. The Jewish state has long struggled with violence connected to the decades-old conflict with the Palestinians but has seen much less domestic violent crime. Police have investigated 204 murders over the past year. The latest victim, 59-year-old Aryeh Karp, was on a beach with his wife Sarah and their 24-year-old daughter Hila on Friday night when a group of youths staggered past, one of them making a crude remark. Karp responded, and the conflict soon turned violent as the youths surrounded and beat all three members of the family, local media said. His family was able to escape after the youths broke his wife’s arm and his daughter’s glasses, but they continued beating Karp until he died and then threw the body into the ocean. Police have arrested eight suspects from a mostly Arab town nearby, including several Arab Israelis and two young Jews, a woman and a soldier, who are believed linked to the group.
■IRAN
Chopper crashes near capital
A helicopter crashed yesterday west of Tehran, state TV reported, the second such incident this week. There was no immediate report of possible fatalities or information about the type of helicopter. The crash occurred in the Tehran satellite residential area of Andisheh. A police chopper crashed last Monday in the southern province of Kerman, killing three and leaving three other people aboard injured. The country, which has been under years of US sanctions hampering its ability to buy US aircrafts and spare parts, has suffered a number of aviation disasters over the past decade.
■SPAIN
Blackout hits key airport
A power outage on Saturday night plunged Madrid’s Barajas airport into chaos, RNE radio reported. The blackout was caused by a fire in an electrical substation and several flights were delayed. The power outage impacted terminal T-4, used by Iberia airlines and its partners, and plunged the area into darkness for about an hour. Also affected were the elevators, computers, baggage handling facilities and automatic security gates.
■CUBA
Youth warned over AIDS
Health authorities on Saturday warned of a dramatic rise in AIDS cases among the young on the island, where there more than 1,300 new HIV infections last year and another 1,400 are estimated for this year. Cubans aged 19 to 24 are at the greatest risk of infection, said Jorge Perez, deputy director of the Tropical Medicine Institute in Havana, warning of the dangers of unprotected sex. Of the total of 11,469 cases of HIV infections recorded in the country since 1986, 4,602 people developed aids and 1,864 died, official figures show.
■CHILE
Indians unite for autonomy
Dozens of Indian communities agreed to form the Mapuche Territorial Alliance to fight for political autonomy, a leader said on Saturday after several days of violence over land seizures in the south. Manuel Calfiu, head of the Mapuche community Meli Wixan Mapu, said the Indians must confront the government forcefully to win their demands for ending poverty. “The government does not want to hear us, so there is no other option than to ‘strike the table’ to be heard,” he said. “We do not want more bread crumbs. We want to reclaim our original territory, but the government does not listen to us. For that reason we were united,” Juan Catrillanca, head of the Teumcuicui community, told the newspaper El Mercurio. “Today we are 60 [communities] and soon will be 120.”
■UNITED STATES
Storm alert issued for Ana
Tropical storm watches have been issued for the US, British Virgin Islands and parts of the Netherland Antilles as Ana races west through the Atlantic. Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Bill has formed farther east, and forecasters say they expect it to become a hurricane over the next several days. The Hurricane Center said people in the Leeward Islands and Puerto Rico should also monitor Ana’s progress.
■CUBA
Chavez visits Fidel Castro
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez flew to Havana earlier this week to meet with former president Fidel Castro and said his ailing mentor had fully recovered, officials said on Saturday. Chavez said the man he considers his “ideological father” has “fully recovered” from the illness that forced him to cede power in July 2006 to his brother, President Raul Castro, a move formalized early last year. The two men held two “lengthy” meetings that began on Thursday and continued through Friday afternoon, the government said in a statement. Chavez said he was surprised to see Fidel Castro stay up until 8pm on Thursday to toast with wine and eat cake to celebrate his 83rd birthday, along with his wife, children, grandchildren and Raul Castro.
■UNITED STATES
Indian film star questioned
Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan on Saturday downplayed being questioned at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, saying it was part of a necessary but unfortunate procedure. Khan, one of the Indian film industry’s biggest stars, is in the US to promote his new film, My Name is Khan, which is about racial profiling. He told Press Trust of India news agency that he was detained because his name came up on a computer alert list at Newark airport. However, US customs officials said Khan was questioned as part of a routine process that took 66 minutes. The reported detention made top news on TV stations in India, drawing strong protests.
A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. A blinding flash nearly as bright as the sun. Shockwaves powerful enough to flatten everything for miles. It might sound apocalyptic, but a newly detected asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has a greater than 1 percent chance of colliding with Earth in about eight years. Such an impact has the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes. Scientists are not panicking yet, but they are watching closely. “At this point, it’s: ‘Let’s pay a lot of attention, let’s
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
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DIVERSIFY: While Japan already has plentiful access to LNG, a pipeline from Alaska would help it move away from riskier sources such as Russia and the Middle East Japan is considering offering support for a US$44 billion gas pipeline in Alaska as it seeks to court US President Donald Trump and forestall potential trade friction, three officials familiar with the matter said. Officials in Tokyo said Trump might raise the project, which he has said is key for US prosperity and security, when he meets Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba for the first time in Washington as soon as next week, the sources said. Japan has doubts about the viability of the proposed 1,287km pipeline — intended to link fields in Alaska’s north to a port in the south, where
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