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Reuters

  • Huge blasts at Chinese port kill 44, firefighters missing

    TIANJIN, China: Two huge explosions tore through an industrial area where toxic chemicals and gas were stored in the northeast Chinese port city of Tianjin, killing at least 44 people, including at least a dozen fire fighters, officials and state media said on Thursday.

    At least 520 people were injured, more than 60 of them seriously, the Tianjin government said on its Weibo microblog, and the People’s Daily newspaper said four fires were still burning.

    Wednesday night’s blasts, so large that they were seen by satellites in space, sent shockwaves through apartment blocks kilometres away in the port city of 15 million people. Internet videos showed fireballs shooting into the sky and the U.S. Geological Survey registered the blasts as seismic events.

    Vast areas of the port – the 10th largest in the world – were devastated, crumpled shipping containers were thrown around like match sticks, hundreds of new cars were torched and port buildings left as burnt-out shells, Reuters witnesses said.

    “I was sleeping when our windows and doors suddenly shook as we heard explosions outside. I first thought it was an earthquake,” Guan Xiang, who lives 7 km (4 miles) away from the explosion site, told Reuters by telephone.

    Guan, 24, said he saw flames and a mushroom cloud in the sky as he and other residents scrambled to get out of the building.

    China Central Television had earlier put the death toll at 17. Tianjin authorities later said 12 firefighters were among the 44 killed.

    Industrial accidents are not uncommon in China following three decades of breakneck economic growth. A blast at an auto parts factory in eastern China killed 75 people a year ago when a room filled with metal dust exploded.

    The state-run Beijing News earlier cited Tianjin fire authorities as saying they had lost contact with 36 firefighters, and that another 33 were among the hundreds of people being treated in nearby hospitals.

    The official Xinhua news agency said 1,000 firefighters and more than 140 fire engines were struggling to contain a blaze in a warehouse that contained “dangerous goods”.

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    “The volatility of the goods means the fire is especially unpredictable and dangerous to approach,” Xinhua said.

    Several fire trucks had been destroyed and nearby firefighters wept as they worked to extinguish flames, the Beijing News reported.

    President Xi Jinping demanded that authorities “make full effort to rescue and treat the injured and ensure the safety of people and their property”.

    Xi said in a statement carried by official media that those responsible should be “severely handled”.

    TOXIC SMOKE

    Anxious residents rushed to hospitals to seek news about injured loved ones. Dozens of police guarded the entrance of the TEDA hospital, a Reuters witness said.

    Pictures on Chinese media websites showed residents and workers, some bleeding, fleeing their homes. Xinhua said people had been hurt by broken glass and other flying debris.

    A Reuters witness said grey clouds of smoke billowed above the blast site and several trucks carrying paramilitary police – wearing masks to protect them from potentially toxic smoke – headed to the area.

    The blasts shattered windows in buildings and cars and knocked down walls in a 2-km radius around the site. Photographs on news websites showed burned-out cars inside a multi-storey car park at a logistics base at Tianjin Port.

    Video posted on YouTube from what appeared to be an apartment building some distance from the scene showed an initial blast followed by a second, much bigger, explosion. Shockwaves hit the building seconds later.

    “Our building is shaking. Is this an atomic bomb?” said a frenzied voice inside. (here)

    Despite the devastation, the port was operating normally, a port official said. Tianjin port is the gateway to northern China’s industrial belt.

    Xinhua said the explosions, the first equivalent to 3 tonnes of TNT and the second to 21 tonnes of TNT, ripped through a warehouse.

    It identified the owner of the warehouse as Tianjin Dongjiang Port Ruihai International Logistics. The company’s website said it was a government-approved firm specialising in handling “dangerous goods”. Company officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

    According to an assessment by government environmental inspectors published in 2014, the facility was designed to store several dangerous and toxic chemicals including butanone, an explosive industrial solvent, sodium cyanide and compressed natural gas.

    CCTV said at least one person at a “relevant company” had been detained.

  • North Korea executes vice premier for discontent with leader – Yonhap

    Yonhap News Agency cited an unnamed source as saying that the 63-year-old Choe Yong Gon, a former delegate for North-South cooperation, was executed, marking another death of a senior official in a series of high-level purges since Kim Jong Un took charge in late 2011.

    The Yonhap report said Choe had expressed disagreement with Kim’s forestry policies in May and had shown poor work performance. It provided no further details.

    South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles the country’s ties with North Korea, said in a text message received by Reuters that Choe had not been spotted in public for about eight months, and that it was closely monitoring the situation.

    South Korea’s National Intelligence Service declined to comment on the report to Reuters.

    The South Korean spy agency told lawmakers in May that North Korea had executed its defence chief by putting him in front of an anti-aircraft gun at a firing range.

    Choe was appointed vice-premier last year, North Korea’s state-run KCNA news agency reported previously.

    Yonhap said the source also said the reclusive state had publicly executed a senior Workers’ Party official in September.

    Choe had worked on inter-Korean affairs in 2000s, leading the North’s delegation in joint economic cooperation committees with South Korea between 2003 and 2005.

    He attended the 2004 opening ceremony of the Kaesong Industrial Complex, a factory park jointly run with Seoul that is the last remaining joint project of the two countries.

  • Three-year-old boy becomes mayor of small town in Minnesota

    “I told him to be nice when you talk to people and don’t say any poopy talk,” Robert Tufts said, relaying the conversation he had with his younger brother James after he became ceremonial mayor of Dorset, Minnesota, on Aug. 2.

    James was named mayor of the town of 22 residents during the annual Taste of Dorset food festival. His name was drawn from a bucket during a $1 raffle to become mayor for a year, taking over for his brother Robert, who served as mayor for two years.

    “I’m doing pretty good,” James said, adding that he likes being mayor, during a brief phone interview.

    Emma Tufts said she is proud of her sons who have used the post to raise money for Ronald McDonald House Charities and the Salvation Army.

    “It’s pretty awesome because they are doing so much good with it,” she said.

    Anyone can become mayor of Dorset. A 4-year-old Chicago boy was once mayor and other candidates have included a local rooster who unfortunately met his demise before the drawing was held, according to an online description of the event.

  • Extrajudicial killings rise in police crackdown in Karachi

    Karachi, a metropolis of 20 million that hosts the stock exchange and central bank, is beset by armed violence, and many of its sprawling slums are no-go areas for outsiders.

    Two years ago, the military, with help from police, paramilitary Rangers and intelligence agencies, unleashed a campaign against armed gangs and suspected militants in the city.

    Murders are down to 202 so far in 2015, compared with 2,507 in 2013, police records show.

    “The efforts carried out by government have resulted in a marked decrease in crimes,” Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar said.

    Murders in Karachi decreased by 50 per cent over the 12 months through July, while no new kidnapping for ransom cases were reported over that period, Nisar said.

    According to political leaders, human rights activists and families of victims, however, the crackdown has been accompanied by allegations of extortion and killings by the police in staged encounters – a practice where police claim the victim was killed in a gunfight though they were executed.

    In interviews, half a dozen serving and former police officials said such extra-judicial killings were being used as a policing technique and a way to release the burden on courts.

    Accusations of abuses by Pakistan’s military and police are not new, but the acknowledgment by officials marks an unusual admission in a country with a poor human rights record.

    Rao Anwar, a senior Karachi police official against whom the NGO United Human Rights Commission of Pakistan filed a court case in May for alleged extra-judicial killings, said suspects were sometimes handed over to police by Rangers and intelligence officials to be “dealt with”.

    But he added that most of the killings were as a result of police clashes with criminals.

    When asked whether he thinks innocent people were also killed, Anwar said, “This is a state of war.”

    “There are always grey areas in such matters. And when the justice system fails to convict suspects then these things happen,” he said.

    The United Human Rights Commission alleged in the case against Anwar that he killed 60 people in staged encounters. The Sindh High Court will hear the case next month.

    Anwar declined to comment on the case.

    Ghulam Qadir Thebo, the inspector general for Karachi until July, said police had killed 234 criminals in police clashes since January this year.

    A senior policeman, who declined to be named, put the figure at 1,000, saying a majority of the deaths were extrajudicial killings. Three other serving officials confirmed the assessment.

    The inspector general’s office declined comment on the figure. Neither the intelligence services nor Rangers answered requests for comment.

    While police acknowledge that the crackdown has resulted in excesses on the margins, they say police are also often victims of attacks by criminals. More than 150 police have been killed since the start of the operation, police said.

    “BODIES IN HANDCUFFS”

    According to the families of six alleged victims, identified by Reuters through cases filed in the Supreme Court and high courts, security forces have carried out mass arrests, and some of those detained have faced a stark choice: pay or be killed.

    Reuters could not independently verify their claims.

    Muhammad Noman, a Karachi resident, said he and his uncle were on their way to work in Jan. 3, 2014 when they were bundled into a vehicle by armed men wearing police and Rangers’ uniforms.

    “They covered our eyes and half an hour after picking us up, they let me go,” Noman said. “We searched for my uncle everywhere. Three days later, police called us and said his body had been found.”

    Noman and his family filed a court case four days later against the police and say they have received threats that more relatives will “disappear” unless they retract the case.

    The police have filed a denial before the court.

    Azeem Khan, an unemployed heroin addict, said he was grabbed by four policemen outside a poultry shop in the slums of Karachi in April and driven to an abandoned plaza.

    He said he was offered two options: death or pay a $4,000 ransom to the police.

    “My life was spared because I said I would pay in small installments,” Khan told Reuters in Sohrab Goth, a crowded slum that was high on the police list of places to “clean up”.

    A junior police official would visit monthly to collect the money, he said. Police denied the allegation.

    At Karachi’s Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, Afzal, a doctor who only wanted to be identified by his first name, said police had on occasion brought in bullet-riddled bodies, shot at close range.

    “Many times I have removed the handcuffs in the morgue,” the doctor said, showing pictures of two victims whose hands were tied.

    When asked about Afzal’s account, one senior police official who declined to be named said: “It is possible that there are some cases of mischief by individual officers, but by and large this is a clean job. Police know what they are doing.” – Reuters

  • Fantastic Four bombs at the box office with $26.2 million weekend

    Fox’s hopes of rejuvenating the comic book characters and turning the super-team into a cinematic juggernaut to rival “X-Men” have flamed out given that the film debuted to a dreadful $26.2 million across 3,995 theaters. With a production budget of $120 million, plus millions more in marketing costs, the film will need to get a boost from foreign crowds if it wants to avoid being a write-off.

    The studio was banking on a cast of up-and-coming actors like Michael B. Jordan and Miles Teller and a wunderkind director in the form of “Chronicle’s” Josh Trank to push the Human Torch, the Thing, Invisible Woman and Mr. Fantastic into the modern era, but production difficulties may have doomed the project. Trank reportedly exhibited bizarre behavior on set that was so extreme it cost him his gig directing a “Star Wars” spinoff. He seemed to acknowledge those tensions, blaming studio-mandated reshoots for the poor critical notices in a tweet Thursday that he subsequently deleted.

    “This turned into a nightmare for Fox,” said Jeff Bock, an analyst with Exhibitor Relations. “Everything that could go wrong went wrong and the whole thing fell apart.”

    “Fantastic Four’s” opening is well below the $40 million-plus debut that most analysts had projected and trails the $56 million launch of 2005’s “Fantastic Four” and the $58 million bow of 2007’s “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.” It’s the worst opening for a movie featuring Marvel Comics’ characters since “Ghost Rider: The Spirit of Vengeance” debuted to $22.1 million in 2012. A C- CinemaScore means that word-of-mouth is going to be toxic.

    “The confluence of clearly the decidedly negative reviews with the combination of social media did not help the cause,” said Fox distribution chief Chris Aronson.

    He was not willing to write off the “Fantastic Four” series yet, but stressed that the studio would be engaged in a rigorous postmortem about the film’s failure. The foursome’s future might be as supporting players in other comicbook characters’ movies.

    “We have a lot to look forward to in our comicbook character universe,” said Aronson. “We may find different ways to feature these characters in the future, but it’s early and we’ll have to see what form that takes.”

    The film’s opening weekend crowd was 60% male and 51% under the age of 25.

    “Fantastic Four’s” anemic opening was good news for “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation,” which edged out the comicbook movie to capture first place on the box office charts. The Paramount sequel earned a strong $29.4 million in its second week in theaters, pushing its domestic total to $108.7 million.

    It was a crowded weekend at the multiplexes with four new wide releases piling into theaters. Among the new entrants, STX Entertainment’s “The Gift” fared best, with the thriller picking up $12 million across 2,503 theaters and nabbing a third place finish. That’s a solid debut considering the film, which Blumhouse Productions co-financed and co-produced, cost a mere $5 million to make. It marks STX’s first theatrical release — the studio was launched in 2014 by producer Robert Simonds with the goal of making the kind of mid-budget films that studios have largely abandoned in favor of superhero adventures.

    “This is an exceptional start for our company,” said Kevin Grayson, STX’s domestic distribution group president. “We got to battle test our marketing and distribution groups.”

    Grayson said the film has been playing more like a psychological thriller than a horror movie, so he believes it should hold up well in coming weeks instead of fading quickly. The audience skewed older and female, with women making up 53% of the opening crowd and 73% of ticket buyers clocking in at over 25 years old.

    “We knew people were chomping at the bit to get more adult-skewing product,” Grayson said.

    Sony’s “Ricki and the Flash” got off to a slower start, picking up $7 million from 1,603 theaters. The film stars Meryl Streep as an aging rocker re-connecting with her estranged family and the hope is that the picture, which appeals to older crowds, will gradually build its audience in the coming weeks. It cost an economical $18 million to produce and is the first release from the rebooted Tri-Star, the label Tom Rothman was overseeing before he took the reins as head of Sony Pictures.

    “It’s an audience that is probably going to come out over a period of time,” said Rory Bruer, distribution chief for Sony. “Films like this have a tendency to play for many, many weeks to come.”

    The final new release, Lionsgate’s “Shaun the Sheep,” didn’t make much of a stir, opening Wednesday and earning $4 million this weekend and $5.6 million in its first five days in theaters. The studio paid roughly $2 million for the rights along with promotion and advertising costs. The break-even point is at approximately $15 million, making it a low-risk investment.

    Among art house players, Sony Pictures Classics’ coming-of-age drama “Diary of a Teenage Girl” earned $54,525 on four screens, with a per-screen average of $13,631. IFC expanded World War II thriller “Phoenix” from four to 27 screens, where it generated $135,810, bringing its domestic total to $259,492. Focus World bowed thriller “Cop Car” in three locations and on-demand. It took in $27,000 for a per-theater average of $9,000 and is of particular interest to Hollywood as it was directed by Jon Watts, the man who just took over the Spider-Man franchise.

    The top five was rounded out by Warner Bros.’ “Vacation” with $9.1 million and Disney and Marvel’s “Ant-Man” with $7.8 million, pushing their totals to $37.3 million and $147.4 million, respectively.

    Final numbers are still being tallied, but the overall box office will be down steeply compared to the same weekend a year ago, as none of the new films could match the $65.6 million debut of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” or the $42.1 million second weekend of “Guardians of the Galaxy.” It’s the second straight week of declines, a sign that ticket sales are slowing down entering the dog days of summer.

  • Debutant Worker powers New Zealand to T20 triumph

    Worker’s contribution powered New Zealand to 198 for five at the Harare Sports Club, a total far too challenging for the home side, who could only muster 118 for eight.

    Left-hander Worker came in at No. 3 and took eight balls to get off the mark but, once into gear, brought up his swift half-century off 33 balls with one of his four sixes. Martin Guptill (33) and Luke Ronchi (29) also contributed to a steady run haul.

    Zimbabwe lost a wicket in each of the opening three overs after which they were always well behind in the chase.

    Only Craig Ervine, who had scored a maiden ODI century last week, offered any resistance after being dropped first ball. He scored 42 off 46 balls.

    New Zealand, who also beat Zimbabwe 2-1 in the ODI series, now head to South Africa, where they play two T20 internationals and three ODIs.

  • Father of Palestinian toddler killed in arson attack dies of wounds

    Suspected Jewish attackers torched the home of Saad Dawabsheh in the West Bank village of Duma on July 31, killing his 18-month-old child and seriously injuring his wife and a second son, an act that Israel’s prime minister described as terrorism.

    A spokeswoman for Soroka hospital in Israel where Dawabsheh had been receiving treatment said he died early on Saturday.

    Hundreds of Palestinians rallied at Dawabsheh’s funeral in Duma and called on militant factions to take revenge for the deaths.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet has come under growing pressure to crack down on violent far-right Jewish groups since the attack which claimed the life of the toddler and the man while the government decided to allow harsher interrogations of suspected Jewish militants with methods once reserved for Palestinian detainees.

    It also said it would start detaining citizens suspected of political violence against Palestinians without a trial, another practice previously used only on Palestinian suspects.

    Netanyahu put out a statement expressing his “deep sorrow” over Dawabsheh’s death.

    “When I visited the family at the hospital last week, I promised we would use all the tools at our disposal to catch the murderers and bring them to justice, and that is what we are doing,” he said. “We will not accept terror from any side.”

    The United Nations repeated its call for swift action against the attackers.

    “Political, community and religious leaders on all sides should work together and not allow extremists to escalate the situation and take control of the political agenda,” said Nickolay Mladenov, the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process.

  • Texas judge gives man a choice: get married or go to jail

    According to court documents obtained on Friday, Smith County Judge Randall Rogers gave the option to Josten Bundy, of Tyler, Texas, who was arrested in March on a charge of assault causing bodily injury, a misdemeanor. Bundy had gotten into a fight with the ex-boyfriend of his then girlfriend and now wife.

    The judge said he would grant probation if Bundy married his 19-year-old girlfriend, Elizabeth Jaynes, within 30 days, write Bible verses and attend counseling. If he declined, he would go to jail, according to a transcript of the proceedings obtained by Tyler TV broadcaster KLTV.

    “Is she worth it?” Rogers asked Bundy, according to the transcripts.

    The bride’s father was angry at the judge for pressuring the pair into marriage and was looking into whether this was judicial misconduct, he told KLTV.

    “He (the judge) can’t do this by court ordering somebody to be married,” the bride’s father, Kenneth Jaynes, said.

    The judge was not available for a comment.

    The couple, who had talked about eventually getting married but did not have immediate wedding plans, is happy that they have tied the knot. But did not appreciate being forced into it, they told the broadcaster. They were not immediately available for comment.

    “It just felt like we weren’t going to be able to have the wedding we wanted,” the new bride told the TV station.

    “I didn’t even have a white dress.”

    The newlyweds have posted a photo of their wedding on Facebook taken from the county court. – Reuters

  • One Direction break streaming record as they top UK chart

    One Direction’s fourth number one single racked up a record 2.03 million plays in its opening week across chart-reporting streaming services such as Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music and others, the Official Charts Company said.

    Calvin Harris and Disciples’ “How Deep Is Your Love” jumped six places to second spot among the singles while last week’s Number 1 “Black Magic” by Little Mix fell to three.

    In the albums charts, London indie rock band The Maccabees claimed their first Number with their fourth studio album “Marks To Prove It.”

    British singer-songwriter Lianne La Havas was at number two with “Blood,” just ahead of Years & Years’ “Communion” at three.

    Black, one of Britain’s best-known singers and TV presenters who started her career at Liverpool’s Cavern Club alongside the Beatles, died from a stroke at her Spanish villa on Aug. 1 at the age of 72. Her “The Very best of” album was up at 14 as fans bought her records in tribute while her 1964 hit “Anyone who Had a Heart” rose this week to No. 41 in the singles charts.

  • Twelve dead as Mali hotel siege ends, hostages freed

    The gunmen had seized the Byblos Hotel in the town of Sevare, around 600 km (400 miles) northeast of the west African nation’s capital Bamako, early on Friday and held off troops who quickly surrounded the building.

    The attack, far to the south of the Islamist militants’ traditional desert strongholds, was the latest in what appears to be a growing campaign against Malian troops and U.N. personnel by remnants of an al Qaeda-linked insurgency.

    “(The siege) seems to be over and it has ended well,” said a Malian defence ministry spokesman, Colonel Diaran Koné. “We freed the four hostages. But unfortunately we also found three bodies at the site.”

    A spokeswoman for Mali’s U.N. peacekeeping mission, MINUSMA, said four U.N. contractors – two from South Africa along with a Russian and a Ukrainian – had been freed in the pre-dawn raid by security forces.

    “At no point were they discovered by the terrorists in the hotel. They were hiding,” Radhia Achouri said, adding that the mission was verifying whether any other MINUSMA personnel were present inside the hotel.

    Three hostages died during the ordeal, Malian government spokesman Choguel Kokala Maiga said, adding that authorities were still attempting to confirm their nationalities.

    Five soldiers and four gunmen, including one who officials earlier said was strapped with explosives, were also killed, he said.

    Seven suspects have been arrested in connection with the attack, according to a government statement released late on Friday.

    Ukraine and Russia had previously confirmed that their citizens were among the hostages. Russian news agencies, citing a press attache at Moscow’s embassy in Mali, said a Russian hostage employed by the airline UTair was among those freed on Saturday.

    At least one French national was also believed to have been staying at the hotel, Malian military officials said on Friday.

    A French foreign ministry official said Paris was attempting on Saturday to verify whether any of its citizens had been among the hostages.

    SMALL ARMS FIRE

    A 2013 French-led military operation drove back Islamist fighters, who had taken advantage of an ethnic Tuareg rebellion and a military coup to seize territory in the north a year earlier.

    While the United Nations has managed to broker a tenuous peace agreement between the government and Tuareg separatists, Islamist fighters left out of the negotiations have mounted a insurgency.

    Former colonial ruler France and other Western and regional nations fear Islamist fighters could turn the remote region into a launch pad for attacks further afield if they regain power there.

    Describing the security forces’ operation early on Saturday, a Sevare resident living near the hotel told Reuters: “The assault … took place between 4 and 5 o’clock this morning. We didn’t hear heavy weapons this time. There was just some small arms fire.”

    On Friday Malian forces had used heavy weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades, in a failed attempt to dislodge the gunmen that then gave way to the prolonged stand-off.

    The resident and a Malian military source said a special unit of the Malian gendarmes had carried out Saturday’s pre-dawn raid.

    Koné, the defence ministry spokesman, said that French forces had backed the operation. But a French army spokesman said French soldiers had not been directly involved in the assault on the hotel.

    “We played a coordination role with MINUSMA and the Malian armed forces, but this is a normal role that we play all the time,” the official said.