XINHUA – A highway bus yesterday caught fire in the northern Japanese prefecture of Hokkaido, with no injuries reported so far, according to Japanese authorities.
At around 5.05pm, the vehicle, an airport shuttle bus en route from Sapporo to New Chitose Airport, caught fire on the Doo Expressway near Eniwa City.
The driver called emergency services after noticing flames coming from the engine but failed to extinguish the fire, and the bus became engulfed in flames.
All 13 people on board, including 12 passengers and the driver, safely evacuated without injury, according to the fire department.
Firefighters were still working to extinguish the blaze, which caused a temporary closure of the expressway’s northbound lanes between Kitahiroshima and Eniwa interchanges.
SEOUL (XINHUA) – Twenty-two people were injured in South Korea’s car crash on the first day of the five-day Chuseok holiday, the country’s autumn harvest celebration, Yonhap news agency reported yesterday citing police and fire authorities.
An express bus collided with a guardrail and hit a median strip near a toll of an expressway in western Busan, the country’s southeastern port city, at about 6.56am local time (2156GMT on Friday).
All the 22 people on the bus, including a driver, were wounded, and four of them were seriously injured.
Two of the seriously injured were found on the opposite lane of the expressway after being thrown out of the bus due to the impact of the accident.
The seriously injured were not in a life-threatening condition.
The police were investigating the exact cause of the accident, in which the driver was not drunk driving.
Traffic was forecast to be heavy across the country during the autumn holiday, when South Koreans visit their hometowns in rural areas to get together with families and relatives.
An emergency worker carries a patient to a Seoul-based university hospital. PHOTO: THE KOREA HERALD
NEW DELHI (AFP) – A top political opponent of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi walked out of jail on Friday, ending months behind bars after being bailed in an ongoing corruption case against him.
Chief Minister of the capital Delhi Arvind Kejriwal, a key leader in an opposition alliance that battled Modi in national elections this year, was first detained in March.
He is among several opposition figures facing graft probes and his party has described his arrest as a “political conspiracy” orchestrated by Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Kejriwal walked free from a jail in the capital on Friday where he was greeted by hundreds of cheering supporters.
“They wanted to break me by jailing me,” he said after waving triumphantly at the crowd.
“My resolve is stronger than before,” he added.
Supporters of Arvind Kejriwal celebrate outside Tihar jail after the Supreme Court granted him bail in New Delhi. PHOTO: AFP
A two-judge bench of the Supreme Court ruled earlier in the day that Kejriwal’s arrest was lawful but that he should be released from custody while contesting the charges against him.
“Prolonged incarceration amounts to unjust deprivation of liberty,” Supreme Court justice Surya Kant said in a verdict.
Kejriwal was bailed on a INR1-million (USD11,900) bond on the conditions that he did not make public comment on the merits of the case against him, did not visit his office and refrained from signing official files.
The politician had earlier been freed by the same court for several weeks to allow him to campaign in this year’s general election, returning to custody once voting concluded.
His administration was accused of corruption when it implemented a policy to liberalise the sale of liquor in the capital three years ago, surrendering a lucrative government stake in the sector.
The policy was withdrawn the following year, but the resulting probe into the alleged corrupt allocation of licences has since led to the jailing of two top Kejriwal allies.
Rallies in support of Kejriwal, who has consistently denied wrongdoing and refused to relinquish his post after his arrest, were held in numerous other big cities around India after he was taken into custody.
LOS ANGELES (AFP) – The scale of a tragic wildfire that swept through a Hawaiian island last year, killing over 100 people, was the result of a complex interaction of factors that were “years in the making”, an official report said on Friday.
Downed power lines are believed to have set fire to vegetation on the holiday idyll of Maui on August 8, with the rapidly spreading blaze leveling the historic town of Lahaina.
Fast moving flames caught islanders unaware, with some people only learning there was a fire when they saw it for themselves, leading to criticism that authorities had mishandled the disaster.
Days after the blaze and amid fierce criticism that the island’s warning sirens had not been sounded, the head of Maui’s emergency management agency resigned.
The second phase of a report ordered by the state’s attorney general was published on Friday, and concluded that a confluence of factors and institutional failings had contributed to the heavy toll in both life and property.
“The devastation caused by the Lahaina fire cannot be connected to one specific organisation, individual, action or event,” said Steve Kerber of the Fire Safety Research Institute, an independent agency appointed by the state to examine the disaster.
Buildings are engulfed in flames during a wildfire in Hawaii. PHOTO: AP
“The conditions that made this tragedy possible were years in the making,” he told reporters in Honolulu on Friday.
The report said local governments, businesses and the population at large did not sufficiently understand the risk from wildfires, often ignoring so-called “red-flag” days when wind conditions allow a fire to spread rapidly.
It also concluded that infrastructure standards, including how communities are planned, were decades out of date, and insufficient attention was paid to keeping populated areas free of combustible vegetation that feeds fires.
And it said the emergency response to the blaze once it broke out was uncoordinated.
“Maui county incident management operations… consisted of a siloed command structure that contributed to a lack of communication both to the public and responding agencies,” the report said.
The report, which was published online alongside more than 850 gigabytes of material collected during the investigation, comes just over a year after the blaze, the deadliest wildfire in the United States in at least a century.
A mammoth legal settlement announced last month between victims’ representatives and a coalition of the state of Hawaii, Maui County, and Hawaiian Electric will see USD4 billion paid out for losses.
Hawaii Governor Josh Green has previously said recovery from the devastation will cost USD12 billion and could take years.
Attorney General Anne Lopez said the report issued on Friday was not intended to lay blame, but to improve the way that Hawaii as a whole prepares for extreme events.
She said the over 100 recommendations it made were timely because of the growing threat from fires, whose ferocity and prevalence is being exacerbated by human-caused climate change.
“There have been over 1,500 wildfire ignitions requiring a department response since August 8, 2023, of those, seven… resulted in significant fires,” she told reporters.
“I think the risk is real and it’s a present danger, and climate change will only continue to make these things worse.”
CULIACÁN (AFP) – Escalating fighting between factions of one of Mexico’s most violent drug cartels has left at least 15 people dead this week in a gang stronghold shaken by gunfire, abductions and arson, authorities said on Friday.
Security reinforcements have been sent to the northwestern state of Sinaloa – the bastion of jailed drug kingpin Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman and his sons – where bodies have been abandoned in the streets.
The fighting follows the dramatic arrest on United States (US) soil in July of Sinaloa Cartel co founder Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada, who claimed he had been kidnapped in Mexico and delivered into US custody against his will.
Zambada, 76, was detained along with Joaquin Guzman Lopez, a son of El Chapo, who is serving a life sentence in the US.
The wave of violence in Sinaloa state capital Culiacan is believed to pit gang members loyal to El Chapo and his sons against others aligned with Zambada, who pleaded not guilty to a raft of charges in a New York court on Friday.
“The rivalry stems from the events of July 25,” Sinaloa state governor Ruben Rocha Moya said.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Friday urged the warring factions to “act with a minimum of responsibility”, urging them not to “harm innocent people”.
He called on residents “to act with caution, but without alarmism”.
DIDIM (AFP) – Mourners gathered in southwest Turkiye yesterday for the funeral of an American-Turkish activist, who was shot dead while protesting Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
The killing last week of 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi has sparked international condemnation and infuriated Turkiye, further escalating tensions over the war in Gaza.
Eygi’s body, wrapped in the Turkish flag and carried by uniformed officers, arrived at its final resting place in the Aegean town of Didim.
A picture of Eygi was placed near the coffin during the funeral at the local mosque.
A large crowd gathered during the prayers including Eygi’s family, members of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP party and activists.
Eygi was shot while taking part in a demonstration on September 6 in the northern part of the occupied West Bank, near Nablus.
She was a human rights activist and volunteer for the International Solidarity Movement, which calls for resisting the oppression of Palestinians using non-violent methods.
ABOVE & BELOW: The coffin of American-Turkish activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi is carried by Turkish honour guard police officers; and Mehmet Suat Eygi, father of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, before the funeral ceremony. PHOTO: AFPPHOTO: AFP
Her family wanted Eygi to be buried in Didim, where her grandfather lives and her grandmother has been laid to rest. She was a frequent visitor to the seaside resort.
Ankara said this week it was probing her death and pressed the United Nations (UN) for an independent inquiry.
Turkiye said it was also planning to issue international arrest warrants for those responsible for Eygi’s death, depending on the findings of its investigation.
The UN said Eygi had been taking part in a “peaceful anti-settlement protest” in Beita, the scene of weekly demonstrations.
Israeli settlements, where about 490,000 people live in the West Bank, are illegal under international law.
The young woman’s body arrived in Istanbul on Friday from Tel Aviv, before being transferred to Turkiye’s third-biggest city Izmir, where an autopsy was carried out. Initial findings from that autopsy revealed a bullet hit her in the head, and the cause of Eygi’s death was defined as “skull fracture, brain haemorrhage and brain tissue damage”, state-run TRT television reported.
The report overlapped with an initial autopsy carried out by three Palestinian doctors, which concluded that a bullet passed directly through the victim’s skull.
Her mother, Rabia Birden, on Friday urged Turkish officials to pursue justice.
“The only thing I ask of our state is to seek justice for my daughter,” she was quoted as saying by Anadolu news agency.
Her father, Mehmet Suat Eygi, paid tribute to his daughter in Didim, telling AFP that she was a “very special person”.
“She was sensitive to human rights, to nature, to everything,” he said.
United States President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for Israel to provide “full accountability” for Eygi’s death.
Erdogan has vowed to ensure “that Aysenur Ezgi’s death does not go unpunished”.
THE HAGUE (AFP) – Extinction Rebellion (XR) climate activists blocked a major motorway running through The Hague yesterday, their “most disruptive” action yet to protest against billions of euros in Dutch fossil fuel subsidies.
The demonstration coincided with a police strike over pensions.
While officers were present in case of emergencies, they were not set to break up the protest as usually happens. Many of the activists had conducted a week-long march from Arnhem in the east of the Netherlands that culminated in the protest on the A12 motorway that serves The Hague.
XR said some protesters planned to take advantage of the police absence to camp out overnight in the motorway tunnels.
“We will keep coming back until the subsidies are abolished,” said XR spokeswoman Rozemarijn van ‘t Einde, adding that they amounted to between EUR39.7 and EUR46.4 billion per year.
Authorities have not ruled out shutting off large sections of the motorway to traffic to ensure the activists’ safety.
The XR group regularly targets the A12 motorway and police often arrest hundreds of protesters.
Extinction Rebellion activists block the A12 motorway near The Hague in the Netherlands. PHOTO: AFP
LONDON (AFP) – Seven men who sexually abused two girls two decades ago received hefty jail sentences in the United Kingdom (UK) on Friday as a result of Britain’s biggest ever investigation into child abuse.
The men were imprisoned for between seven and 25 years after being convicted in June of offences committed in Rotherham, in northern England, in the early 2000s.
The cases stem from the National Crime Agency’s (NCA) Operation Stovewood, a decade-long investigation into child sexual abuse that is the largest of its kind in UK history.
It began in 2014 following the publication of the Jay Report, which sent shockwaves around the country.
It found that at least 1,400 girls were abused, trafficked and groomed by gangs of men in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013. The report found that police and social services failed to put a stop to the abuse.
Some 36 people have been convicted so far as a result of the operation, according to the NCA, which investigates serious, organised and international crime.
The latest convictions came at the end of a nine-week trial at Sheffield Crown Court.
The trial heard how the victims, who were aged between 11 and 16 at the time of the offences and were both in the care of social services, were groomed and often plied with alcohol or drugs before being raped or assaulted.
They would often be collected by their abusers from the children’s homes where they lived at the time, the NCA said.
“These men were cruel and manipulative, grooming their victims and then exploiting them by subjecting them to the most harrowing abuse possible,” said NCA senior investigating officer Stuart Cobb.
PHNOM PENH (XINHUA) – Cambodia cracked down on 104 human trafficking and sexual exploitation cases in the first half of 2024, according to a National Committee for Counter Trafficking (NCCT) report yesterday.
Twenty-two cases involved human trafficking and 82 cases were related to sexual exploitation during the January-June period this year, the report said, adding that during the crackdowns, the authorities had arrested a total of 134 suspects, including four foreigners.
“A total of 290 victims including 241 females had been rescued,” the report said, adding that 134, or 46 per cent, of them were under the age of 18.
Interior Ministry’s Secretary of State Chou Bun Eng, who is also the NCCT’s permanent vice-chairwoman, said human trafficking cases were linked to crimes of fraud, labour disputes, illegal work and illegal immigration, among others.
“The royal government will continue to do its best to eliminate all forms of human trafficking and sexual exploitation in order to promote the respect for human rights, dignity and social justice,” she said.
SINGAPORE (BERNAMA) – Singaporean police are investigating 305 suspects for scam offences following an enforcement operation from August 30 to September 12, according to the latest statement from the police, reported Xinhua.
The suspects were involved in over 1,500 cases, including investment scams, e-commerce scams, job scams, friend impersonation scams, fake buyer scams and internet love scams.
The police said victims lost over SGD12.8 million (USD9.9 million).
The suspects were under investigation for cheating, money laundering, or providing payment services without a licence.
