HONG KONG Passengers on a Cathay Pacific flight to Los Angeles have spoken of their terror as the aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing at a military airport in Alaska after smoke was detected on board, SCMP reported yesterday. Los Angeles-bound flight CX884 from Hong Kong dramatically changed course when a problem with a cooling fan created smoke, which led to the emergency landing.
PAKISTAN Hundreds of followers and relatives of Pakistan’s most feared Islamic militant leader attended his burial yesterday, a day after he was gunned down in an assault on a police convoy. Many among the mourners were members of Malik Ishaq’s militant Lashkar-e-Jhangvi group and chanted anti-government slogans calling for revenge. Ishaq’s Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has links to the Taliban and to al-Qaida, and allegedly masterminded the killing of scores of minority Shiites across Pakistan.
TURKEY Kurdish rebels have attacked Turkish security forces in two separate assaults in southeast Turkey, killing five people, officials said. One rebel was also killed. The military said rebels from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, launched an attack yesterday on soldiers protecting a military convoy in Sirnak province, near the border with Iraq. Three soldiers, including an officer, died. The military responded with a counter-offensive that killed one PKK rebel.
USA Ray Tensing, 25, a white police officer who shot a black motorist after stopping him over a missing license plate pleaded not guilty yesterday to charges of murder and involuntary manslaughter. The July 19 death of 43-year-old Samuel DuBose in Cincinnati, Ohio, comes amid months of national scrutiny of police dealings with African-Americans, especially those killed by officers. Officer appeared at his arraignment yesterday wearing a striped jail suit, with his hands cuffed behind him.
USA Four rebel Confederate battle flags were found on the grounds of a church near the Martin Luther King Jr. Center in Atlanta yesterday, and police and federal authorities were investigating. Police said a maintenance worker discovered the flags at 6 a.m. yesterday and notified the National Park Service, which operates The King Center, a resource center and memorial near the late civil rights leader’s childhood home.
NEPAL Landslides caused by heavy rains buried several mountain villages in Nepal yesterday, killing at least 30 people, and bad weather was hampering the search for others, authorities said. Rescuers pulled out 19 bodies after the landslide in the village in Lumle, about 200 km west of Kathmandu, according to the National Emergency Operation Center.
SOUTH SUDAN Soldiers believed to be with the South Sudanese army and allied militia stole relief supplies and killed seven people in an attack on a rebel-held part of Unity state, a local official said yesterday. Monday’s attack on the village of Dablual forced some 35,000 civilians to flee into the bush and humanitarian workers to evacuate, said John Riek, the head of a local relief commission.
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