3 injured in small explosion at Shanghai’s Pudong airport

  BEIJING / AP A small explosion at a check-in area of Shanghai’s Pudong airport injured three people on Sunday, Chinese authorities said. The blast at China’s second-busiest airport occurred around 2:20 p.m. and appeared to have been caused by some sort of homemade explosive, the airport’s management said on its verified microblog account. It said the three injured people ...

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South Korea begins ops to lift sunken ferry

  Seoul / AFP A salvage firm on Sunday began a difficult and costly operation to raise a sunken South Korean ferry which capsized at sea more than two years ago in a disaster that shocked and enraged the country. The Sewol was carrying 476 people when it sank off the southwestern island of Jindo in April 2014, with the ...

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Trump mocks Romney on ‘trickle-down racism’ jibe

  Bloomberg Donald Trump returned to the combative form that helped him win the US Republican presidential nomination, slamming Democrats, calling for his party to unite behind him, and responding to Mitt Romney’s suggestion that his election could lead to “trickle-down racism.” At a rallyin Tampa, Florida, the presumptive Republican nominee termed himself “the least racist person that you have ...

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Defend freedom, says Philippines’ Aquino to citizens

  Manila / AFP Philippine leader Benigno Aquino called on his countrymen on Sunday to fight attempts to take away their freedoms as he prepared to hand over power to president-elect Rodrigo Duterte, who has vowed to kill tens of thousands of criminals. Duterte won last month’s elections in a landslide largely on a pledge to suppress what he said ...

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2 Guatemalan ex-ministers arrested for corruption

  Guatemala City / AFP Two former top Guatemalan cabinet ministers were arrested on corruption charges stemming from their tenure in the government of jailed ex-president Otto Perez, the Central American country’s attorney general said. They are alleged to have used their positions to illegally raise money that then was spent on lavish birthday gifts for Perez. The gifts allegedly ...

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Japan to increase floor area ratio amid hotel shortage

  Tokyo / Tribune News Service Japan’s Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry has decided on a plan to relax the floor area ratio of buildings by 1.5 times, or up to an additional 300 percent, depending on respective conditions. The move is so that hotels can be rebuilt as bigger hotels on the same land area, The Yomiuri Shimbun ...

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Mallya’s assets worth Rs 1,411 crore seized

  New Delhi / Tribune News Service The Enforcement Directorate (ED) said it has attached properties worth Rs.1,411 crore of business tycoon Vijay Mallya and his company United Breweries (Holding) Ltd in a case of alleged diversion of Rs.430 crore from an IDBI Bank Ltd loan to his Kingfisher Airlines Ltd to purchase properties overseas. ED, on its Twitter account, ...

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5 private hospitals in India fined Rs700cr

  New Delhi / Tribune News Service The Delhi government fined five prominent private city hospitals Rs 700 crore for not treating poor patients as mandated by the law, underscoring the scanty healthcare options available to the Capital’s economically weaker sections (EWS). Government rules stipulate 10% of all patients admitted to private hospitals must be poor and treated free of ...

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China stock market burns investors with boom-and-bust

Shanghai / AFP Small-time investor Tracy Li lost more than $3,000 of her hard-earned salary from working at a bank after China’s stock market crashed last summer, wiping out trillions of dollars in valuations in just days. A year later, and she has been burned twice, betting government intervention to prop up the market after the rout would guarantee good ...

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