INDIA TAKES NO CHANCES FOR IVANKA TRUMP VISIT
HYDERABAD, India: Indian authorities have cleared beggars off the streets and brought in 10,000 extra security forces for Ivanka Trump’s biggest foreign mission since her father became president. President Donald Trump’s eldest daughter is to be the key speaker Tuesday at the opening of a three- day Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad alongside India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The southern city is home to the India operations of Google, Facebook and Amazon. The 36-year- old, who is an official White House advisor, will seek to press women’s empowerment in business. She will also underline the growing friendship between the United States and India. Trump will be greeted in Hyderabad by Modi who will host a gala dinner at the Falaknuma Palace, a luxury hotel once owned by one of the nizams who ruled the city before India’s independence. Authorities have spruced up an open-air market around Charminar, a 16th century mosque that is one of the city’s icons. Media reports have suggested that Trump could visit the market.
10 BODIES FOUND ON JAPAN COAST OPPOSITE NKOREA
The badly decomposed remains of ten people have been found on Japan’s coast across the sea from North Korea, along with the wreckage of two boats, officials said Monday. The discovery comes just days after a group of eight fishermen, who said they were from North Korea, washed up on the same shore. Police said two cadavers were found in separate places on the edge of the surf on Sado island, which lies around 750 kilometers (450 miles) from North Korea across the Sea of Japan (East Sea). The bodies had begun to putrefy, and had nothing to identify them, senior local police official Hideaki Sakyo told Agence France-Presse. However, he added, there were boxes of North Korean tobacco as well as boat parts and life jackets with Korean script nearby. A wrecked wooden boat with squid-fishing equipment was also found on the coastline. Separately, coastguard officials spotted eight bodies inside a battered wooden boat off northern Akita prefecture. Dozens of North Korean fishing vessels wash up on Japan’s coast every year. Experts say some North Korean fishermen travel far out to sea in order to satisfy government mandates for bigger catches.
SEPTIC TANK AT CENTER OF HUGE CHINA BLAST
NINGBO, China: A septic tank was the epicenter of a massive explosion that rocked one of China’s largest port cities over the weekend, killing two people and injuring at least 19, authorities have said. The blast tore through a crumbling light-industrial area adjacent to crowded residential towers in the city of Ningbo, just south of Shanghai, and was so powerful that it was heard several kilometers (miles) away. The explosion at the epicenter shattered windows in nearby apartments, mangled cars and reduced small buildings to rubble, though locals said the structures were already in poor shape and slated for demolition. Public security officials “have confirmed that the blast’s epicenter is a septic tank in an empty field,” the local government said in a statement late Sunday. Methane and hydrogen sulphide—both highly flammable gases— can build up in septic tanks. Officials have ruled out the possibility of a gas explosion or of the blast being intentionally set off by someone. The statement said in addition to the two fatalities, two people are missing after the explosion. Four people were severely injured and 15 others had minor wounds.