NEWS OF THE DAY
Knife attack: A reportedly mentally ill man attacked morning commuters with a knife in southern China on Thursday, wounding 11 people, including students, police reported. The Ji’an city police said the attacker was immediately tackled by police and onlookers. He was identified as 33-year-old Guo Kaibing, who his family said had a history of mental illness, police said. The attack is the latest in a string of mass stabbings around the country blamed on people with mental illnesses or bearing grudges against individuals or society. Firearms are tightly controlled in China, with private ownership illegal, while knives are mostly unregulated.
Border closure: Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro ordered the vast border with Brazil to be closed on Thursday, just days before opposition leaders plan to bring in foreign humanitarian aid he has refused to accept. Maduro said he is also weighing whether to shut down the border with Colombia. Opposition leaders led by Juan Guaidó are vowing to bring in U.S. supplies of emergency food and medicine to dramatize the country’s hardships under Maduro, who has said the country doesn’t need such help. Venezuela this week also blocked air and sea travel with the nearby Dutch Caribbean island of Curacao, another point where aid was being stockpiled.
Pakistan floods: Torrential rains lashed several cities in Pakistan on Thursday, triggering flash floods and leaving at least 26 dead across the country, many swept away by the waters or killed when their roofs collapsed before dawn, authorities said. The provincial Disaster Management Authority said 14 people, including children, were killed in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Flash floods submerged villages in Baluchistan province, killing three people there and affecting 200 families. Every year, many cities and towns in Pakistan struggle to cope with the annual monsoon deluge, drawing criticism about poor planning.
Asteroid landing: An unmanned Japanese spacecraft touched down on a distant asteroid on a mission to collect material that could provide clues to the origin of the solar system. Workers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency control center applauded Friday as a signal sent from space indicated the Hayabusa2 spacecraft had touched down. The craft is programmed to extend a pipe and shoot a pinball-like object into the asteroid to blow up material from beneath the surface. If that succeeds, the craft would then collect samples to be sent back to Earth. Three such touchdowns are planned. The asteroid is about 3,000 feet in diameter and 170 million miles from Earth.
Statue toppled: Activists in Poland toppled a statue of a prominent Solidarity-era priest Thursday amid allegations that he sexually abused minors, a protest against what they called a failure by the Catholic Church and society to resolve clergy sex abuse. Video footage showed three men attaching a rope around the statue of the late Monsignor Henryk Jankowski in the northern city of Gdansk and then pulling it down to the ground. It was a striking act in a country where more than 90 percent of the population identifies as Roman Catholic and where the church still enjoys significant authority in public life. Jankowski, who died in 2010, rose to prominence in the 1980s through his support for the pro-democracy Solidarity movement in their struggle against Poland’s communist regime.