Briefs

Tunisian officials sacked after protests

TUNIS: Tunisia said on Saturday it had replaced two senior officials in a southeastern region, days after protestors there booed the prime minister off stage following weeks of demonstrations.  Prime Minister Youssef Chahed was shouted down and forced to leave a heated town hall meeting Thursday in Tataouine, 500-km south of Tunis.  That came amid a wave of demonstrations over joblessness and perceived marginalisation of the country’s periphery, six years since Tunisia’s revolution ignited by similar grievances.

 

24 dead in Kyrgyz landslide

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan: A landslide swept over part of a village in Kyrgyzstan early on Saturday, killing 24 people, including nine children, the emergencies ministry said.  The landslide hit the village of Ayu in the Osh region of the mountainous Central Asian country at around 0640 am (0040 GMT) and covered six houses with inhabitants inside, the emergencies ministry said in a statement. "All 24 citizens of Kyrgzystan, nine of them children, died under the landslide in the south of the country," emergencies ministry spokeswoman Elmira Sheripova told AFP.  A total of 266 rescue workers including medics and soldiers were at the scene, Sheripova said.

 

China deports US woman convicted of ‘spying’

SAN FRANCISCO: An American woman convicted of espionage this week has been deported by China, a human rights group that campaigned for her release said on Saturday, removing a source of tensions between Washington and Beijing.  Sandy Phan-Gillis was detained in March 2015 at the Macau border after visiting mainland China with a trade delegation from the Texas oil capital Houston.  She was accused of espionage, stealing state secrets and allegedly passing on intelligence to a third party. She was sentenced to three and a half years in prison and deportation on Wednesday.  On Friday, "Phan-Gillis was deported. She arrived in Los Angeles the same day. She was met upon arrival by her husband and members of her family," the Dui Hua group said in a statement.  Her return to the US comes three weeks after Chinese President Xi Jinping met US President Donald Trump in Florida, amid a warming of ties between the two countries.

 

19 killed in Myanmar

YANGON: 19 people were killed and 21 injured after their bus toppled into a ravine in eastern Myanmar, police said Saturday. The bus was carrying around 40 passengers from central Bago province when it plunged off a highway near Myawaddy, a town on the Thai border, on Friday.  "Nineteen people were killed and 21 people were injured, while a few people were lucky to live," Kyi Lin, the chief of police in Karen state said.  Police and local aid groups have brought the injured to nearby hospitals for urgent care and are making funeral arrangements for the dead, he added. A hospital in Mae Sot, the Thai town across the border, took in seven patients from the crash who were in "critical condition," a medical worker said.