World

TAIPEI — Taiwan was shaken by dozens of earthquakes overnight and into Tuesday that left buildings swaying and some tilting, with the government saying they were aftershocks from a huge deadly quake that hit the island more than two weeks ago.

The strongest, which the US Geological Survey measured at magnitude 6.1, hit around 2:30am (18:30 GMT) followed minutes later by a 6.0 tremor.

Taipei’s Central Weather Administration put them at 6.0 and 6.3, respectively.

Authorities said there were no casualties reported so far, but the non-stop shaking meant a restless night even for those in the capital Taipei about 150 kilometres north, where walls and glass panels rattled in swaying homes.

“I was too scared to move and stayed in bed,” said office worker Kevin Lin, 53, in Taipei, who told AFP he was jolted awake by the intense quakes.

Around 8:00am, a 5.8-magnitude tremor shook the capital as commuters made their way to work.

The tremors started Monday around 5:00pm and by about 10:30am the next day the Central Weather Administration said it had recorded more than 200 quakes.

All had originated from Hualien on the central east coast of Taiwan.

The mountainous county was the epicentre of a magnitude-7.4 quake that hit April 3, which Taiwan said was the “strongest in 25 years”, triggering landslides that blocked roads and severely damaged buildings around the main Hualien city.

At least 17 people were killed, with the latest body found in a quarry on April 13.

A hotel building in Hualien that was previously damaged started tilting at an angle on Tuesday after the quakes, according to footage obtained by AFP.

“Please come out for your safety. Let’s evacuate first OK? Anyone still inside? Please come down,” shouted a firefighter to the residents of nearby buildings.

Hsu-ho Lin told local news channel Formosa TV that he had immediately ran over to the hotel building because his grandma lives there and she “kept refusing to leave”.

“My grandmother insisted on staying and my grandfather could not persuade her,” Lin said, adding that they were now evacuating from the building. 

The first floor of a nearby residential building was flattened by Tuesday’s quakes, its tilting frame precariously propped up by metal beams.

Tenants had already evacuated from there after the April 3 quake, and the building was awaiting demolition.

Hualien county government announced that schools and offices would be closed Tuesday due to the continuous aftershocks.

Taiwan sees frequent earthquakes due to its location at the junction of two tectonic plates, and the April 3 quake was followed by more than 1,100 aftershocks — causing rockfalls and tremors around Hualien.

A Taipei government seismologist said the latest “swarm” of tremors originated to the south of the main April quake, unlike the earlier ones which had been mainly to the north.

Seismologists Judith Hubbard and Kyle Bradley agreed the activity appeared to have shifted to becoming more concentrated on the southern side of the April 3 rupture. 

“The new cluster of seismicity is not a typical mainshock-aftershock sequence,” they wrote in their newsletter “Earthquake Insights”.

The recent quakes appeared to have stepped up in magnitude over time, they said — counter to the usual pattern of a large one that gradually decays.

It remains unclear if this could trigger a large earthquake again, but “this swarm is a certainly good opportunity for people in the region to revisit their recently tested earthquake preparations”, they said.

The April 3 tremor was the most serious in Taiwan since 1999, when a magnitude-7.6 quake hit the island. The death toll then was far higher, with 2,400 people killed in the deadliest natural disaster in the island’s history.

Stricter building regulations — including enhanced seismic requirements in its building codes — and widespread public disaster awareness had staved off a more serious catastrophe in the April 3 quake.

In Taipei, Lin said news of the hotel tilting in Hualien had scared him.

“I live in a 40-year-old apartment and it really worries me whether the apartment can withstand so many earthquakes,” he told AFP.

He added that while the Taiwanese public are taught what to do when a tremor hits, “it is only useful for a small quake”. 

“For a big one, it doesn’t really matter how much quake response you’re taught.”

NEW YORK — Donald Trump engaged in a multilayered conspiracy of fraud, lies and cover-ups, prosecutors said as opening arguments began on Monday in the first ever criminal trial of a former US president.

Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo said Trump falsified business records to pay $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels to buy her “silence” over a 2006 sexual encounter that could have impacted his 2016 presidential bid.

“This case is about a criminal conspiracy and a cover-up,” Colangelo told the jury of New Yorkers in a Manhattan courtroom. “It was election fraud, pure and simple.”

Trump, dressed in a dark suit and blue tie, sat at the defence table, staring straight ahead as the prosecutor delivered his remarks.

Presenting his opening statement to the 12 jurors and six alternates, Todd Blanche, one of Trump’s attorneys, said “President Trump did not commit any crimes.”

“I have a spoiler alert: There’s nothing wrong with trying to influence an election,” Blanche said. “It’s called democracy.”

“The Manhattan DA should never have brought this case,” he said. “President Trump is presumed innocent. He’s cloaked in innocence.”

Before the court session began, Trump also insisted he had done nothing wrong and condemned the case as “election interference” designed to derail his 2024 White House bid.

“It’s a very, very sad day in America,” the 77-year-old Republican presidential candidate told reporters.

“I’m here instead of being able to be in Pennsylvania, in Georgia, and lots of other places campaigning,” he said. “This is a witch hunt.”

Trump is the first former president to face criminal charges and the case poses substantial risks to him less than seven months before his election rematch with President Joe Biden.

Prosecution witnesses are expected to include Daniels and Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen, who arranged the “hush money” payment to the adult film actress.

The identities of the jurors are being kept secret for their own protection

Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying business records to repay Cohen for the “hush money” payment made to Daniels.

The alleged crime is less significant than the indictments stemming from Trump’s attack on the 2020 election — which the Republican lost to Democrat Biden — and his hoarding of secret documents.

Trump could face jail time in the current case, although a fine or probation is more likely, analysts say.

The trial in a dingy courtroom will keep Trump off the campaign trail for four days a week over a possibly six-to-eight-week period, while Biden hammers him from the White House and around the country.

But Trump has tried to used the heavy media attention to fire up his support base by giving regular statements outside the courtroom.

Trump has railed against the case, particularly what he calls the “very unfair” partial gag order imposed by Judge Juan Merchan to prevent him from attacking witnesses, prosecutors and relatives of court staff.

Security was tight on Monday after a man set himself on fire last week outside the courthouse in an unrelated but gruesome incident.

A hearing will be held on Tuesday at which Merchan will decide if Trump is already in contempt of court due to outbursts during jury selection.

The Republican’s three other criminal cases have been repeatedly delayed due to his successful strategy of challenging every step.

However, Merchan has run the New York fraud trial on a tight schedule.

Potential jurors were grilled last week by prosecutors and defence attorneys about their media habits, political donations and education.

Many potential panelists were excused after saying they could not be impartial, before lawyers and the judge whittled down to 12 jurors with six alternates.

WASHINGTON — The US Supreme Court heard arguments on Monday on whether cities can ban homeless people from sleeping outside, as the country grapples with increasing rates of Americans living on the streets and a lack of shelter beds.

The case centres around regulations in the city of Grants Pass, in the western state of Oregon, which banned camping or using any kind of bedding on public property after its public parks became filled with tents, blankets and cardboard.

Those breaking the rules face hundred-dollar fines and possible prison sentences for repeat offenders.

Homeless advocates have argued that banning people from camping when there is nowhere else to sleep amounts to “cruel and unusual punishment” — prohibited by the US Constitution’s Eighth Amendment.

The decision of the nine Supreme Court justices, expected by June 30, could carry high stakes. A record 653,100 people are homeless across the country, according to a 2023 count.

“The ordinances by design make it physically impossible for homeless people to live in Grants Pass without facing endless fines and jail time,” Kelsi Corkran, a lawyer arguing against the ban, told the Supreme Court on Monday.

Corkran added that the ban turns “the city’s homelessness problem into someone else’s problem by forcing its homeless residents into other jurisdictions”.

Theane Evangelis, lawyer for Grants Pass, defended the city’s punishments as “not in any way unusual”.

“This court should reverse and end the Ninth Circuit’s failed experiment,” Evangelis told the justices, referring to the appellate court which in 2022 blocked the city’s regulations.

Evangelis said the 2022 ruling had “fuelled the spread of encampments while harming those it purports to protect”.

Grants Pass, population 40,000, does not have a municipal homeless shelter and instead relies on private charities.

Asked by Chief Justice John Roberts what the city would do if its appeal failed at the Supreme Court, Evangelis said its “hands will be tied”.

“It will be forced to surrender its public spaces,” she added.

Roberts said that the city’s ban was not necessarily a criminalization of homeless “status” since this could change, and instead was about “conduct”.

“You can remove the homeless status in an instant if you move to a shelter or situations otherwise change and of course it can be moved the other way as well if you’re kicked out of the shelter,” Roberts said.

Elena Kagan, one of three liberal justices on the conservative-dominated bench, reproached the city authorities for criminalising a “biological necessity”.

“You could say breathing is conduct too, but presumably, you would not think that it’s okay to criminalise breathing in public. And for a homeless person who has no place to go, sleeping in public is kind of like breathing in public.”

In addition to poverty, drug addiction and a lack of shelter beds propelling homelessness, economists argue the country’s market-rate housing stock is woefully behind target — leaving the United States short of millions of homes needed to meet demand and increasing prices for existing housing.

WARSAW — Poland's president on Monday said his country is ready to host NATO's nuclear arms after Russia reinforced its armaments in neighbouring Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

Poland, a NATO member and a staunch supporter of Ukraine, shares a border with both Kaliningrad exclave and Belarus, Moscow's ally.

"If our allies decide to deploy nuclear arms on our territory as part of nuclear sharing to reinforce NATO's eastern flank, we are ready to do so," Duda said in an interview published by the Fakt daily.

Moscow in response warned it would take steps to "ensure its security".

Duda spoke to the Polish media after a visit to New York, where he held meetings at the UN and discussed the war in Ukraine with former US president Donald Trump.

In March, he visited Washington DC, where he met with US President Joe Biden.

Discussions about nuclear cooperation between Poland and the United States have been going on "for some time", he said.

"I have already talked about this several times. I must admit that when asked about it, I declared our readiness," Duda said.

"Russia is increasingly militarising Kaliningrad. Recently it has been relocating its nuclear weapons to Belarus," he added.

 'Response steps' 

Speaking to reporters later on Monday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he "would have to understand the president's intentions", suggesting the matter had not been discussed between them.

"I would have to know all the circumstances that prompted the president to make this declaration," Tusk said.

"I'm looking forward to meeting President Duda, because the matter directly and very clearly concerns Polish security," Tusk added.

He also said he would host NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg and Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in Warsaw on Tuesday.

Pro-EU coalition leader Tusk has frequently clashed with the right-wing Polish president, but their views on supporting Ukraine and defying threats from Russia have so far been largely similar.

The Kremlin said it would respond if Poland hosted nuclear weapons.

“The military will of course analyse the situation and in any case will take all necessary response steps in order to ensure our security,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

In June 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed that Russia had sent tactical nuclear arms to Belarus, which borders Ukraine and Poland.

During the last NATO summit in Vilnius, the allies pledged to “take all necessary steps to ensure the credibility, effectiveness, safety and security of the nuclear deterrent mission.”

QUITO — Ecuadorans vote in a referendum Sunday on proposed tougher measures to fight gang-related crime as the country grapples with a shocking rise in violence that has seen two mayors killed just this week.

The once-peaceful South American country has recently found itself in the grips of a terrorising wave of violence blamed on gangs with links to transnational cartels using its ports to ship drugs to the United States and Europe.

President Daniel Noboa declared in January a state of “internal armed conflict” with about 20 criminal groups blamed for a spasm of violence sparked by the jailbreak of a major drug lord, still on the run.

Gangsters kidnapped dozens of people, including police and prison guards, opened fire in a TV studio during a live broadcast, and threatened random executions in the days-long outburst that caused about 20 deaths.

Noboa imposed a state of emergency and deployed soldiers to retake control of the country’s prisons, which had become the nerve center for gang operations and a bloody battleground that has claimed the lives of more than 460 inmates in three years — many beheaded or burned alive.

Despite these efforts, the violence has persisted, which Noboa has taken as “a sign that narcoterrorism and its allies are looking for spaces to terrorise us”.

Two mayors have been killed in the past week, making it five in a year and three in less than a month.

Since January last year, at least a dozen politicians have been killed in Ecuador, including presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, who was gunned down last August after a campaign event.

On Sunday, the president will seek popular backing for his plans to clamp down even harder on those responsible for such acts.

Citizens will be asked to approve an expansion of military and police powers, significantly boosting gun controls and imposing harsher penalties for “terrorism” and drug trafficking.

Noboa is also proposing changing the constitution so that Ecuadorans wanted abroad for organised crime-related offenses can be extradited.

Nearly 13.6 million of the country’s 17.7 million inhabitants are eligible to cast a “Yes” or “No” vote Sunday.

‘Dirty campaign’? 

The majority of the referendum questions are related to crime prevention — a priority even as Ecuador also grapples with widespread corruption, a crippling electricity shortage and a diplomatic spat with Mexico.

Last year, the country’s murder rate rose to a record 43 per 100,000 inhabitants — up from a mere six in 2018, according to official data.

In a publication Friday, polling firm Gallup said no other region in the world, excluding active war zones, felt less secure in 2023 to residents than Ecuador’s Guayas province.

Other polls show a majority of Ecuadorans will likely vote for Noboa’s reforms.

“People are endorsing the decisions... taken on the issue of security,” Political Scientist Santiago Basabe of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Flacso) told AFP.

The vote will take place in the same week that Ecuadorans faced power cuts of up to 13 hours as drought left key hydroelectric reservoirs nearly empty.

The government ordered workers to stay at home for two days in a bid to save scant energy resources.

Noboa has put some of the blame on “sabotage” without naming anyone in particular.

“They wanted to ruin us with sabotage... with a dirty campaign, and they have even tried with international pressure to sanction us as a country... because they are nervous,” Noboa said ahead of Sunday’s referendum, adding he was confident that “’Yes’ will win”.

Noboa, who took office last November at the age of just 35, is also dealing with the backlash from Ecuador’s raid on the Mexican embassy in Quito this month to arrest former vice president Jorge Glas, wanted on corruption charges.

Glas had been granted asylum by Mexico, and Ecuador’s move has been widely condemned. Mexico has filed a lawsuit at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

NIAMEY, Niger — Hundreds protested on Sunday against the US troop presence in military-ruled Niger where a delegation from Washington is expected within days to arrange an orderly withdrawal.

The United States had on Friday agreed to withdraw its more than 1,000 soldiers from the African nation where Washington built a $100 million base to fly a fleet of drones.

The demonstration in the northern desert town of Agadez, home to a US air base, was called by a group of 24 civil society associations that have backed the regime since last year’s coup.

“This is Agadez, not Washington, US army go home,” read a big banner held up by protesters.

Issouf Emoud, who fronts the M62 Movement in the town, told AFP: “Our message is clear: American soldiers pack your bags and go home.” 

He had also organised demonstrations demanding the departure of French forces which pulled out last year.

Niger has long been a linchpin in the US and French strategy to combat extremists in West Africa.

The Nigerien military announced last month it was breaking off a defence agreement with the United States, claiming it had been imposed and the US troop presence was illegal.

US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell agreed to remove the troops in a meeting in Washington with Niamey’s prime minister, Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine, US officials told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The US military deployment in Niger “is of no use for our security”, said civil society leader Amobi Arandishu.

“The armed groups still rage across the desert,” he told AFP. “Russians, Americans, Germans, French, they all come here for their own interests.”

Following the overthrow of elected president Mohamed Bazoum last July, the junta kicked out troops from former colonial power France before the end of 2023.

Russian military instructors arrived in Niger this month with an air defence system and other equipment, state media said, after talks between military ruler Gen.  Abdourahamane Tiani and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The US pullout marks a new regional gain for Russia, which has ramped up its focus on Africa, backing military regimes in neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso.

Niger faces violence by Boko Haram extremists and their rivals Islamic State West Africa Province from the southeastern region of Diffa near Nigeria.

WILMINGTON, United States — Donald Trump called off a rally on Saturday, the Republican candidate’s first campaign event since his criminal trial in New York began this week, due to bad weather threatening the outdoor gathering.

Thousands of supporters had gathered for the event at the airport in the North Carolina city of Wilmington when he called in 30 minutes before the scheduled start.

“We want to make sure that everybody is safe above all and so they’ve asked us to ask people to leave the site and seek shelter,” Trump said in the call broadcast over the loudspeakers, with thick dark clouds overhead and scattered lightning strikes.

“It’s a pretty big storm. So if you don’t mind, I think we’re going to have to just do a rain check. I’m so sad.”

Trump promised to hold a “bigger and better” rally at the same venue another time, and the disappointed crowd quickly dispersed.

The event had been set to take place ahead of opening statements Monday morning in Trump’s “hush money” trial in New York, after jury selection was completed on Friday.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of business fraud as part of an alleged plan to cover up payments to a porn star to keep the story of a sexual encounter from emerging just before the 2016 presidential election, in which he beat Hillary Clinton.

Trump has denounced the trial — the first of a former US president — as a political “witch hunt”, and many of his supporters agree.

“It’s not... a criminal trial, really. It’s just a political one,” said Grace Miller, 58, a retiree from North Carolina who had come for the rally. “You can’t just make something into a felony. I mean, they think we’re stupid, but we’re not.”

Truck driver Stephen Prater accused Democrats of using the trial to prevent Trump’s reelection.

“The left is trying to try to pull every stop they can to keep him from getting to office,” said Prater, 29.

Battleground North Carolina 

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump again complained the trial was impeding his ability to campaign.

“THEY WAITED AND BROUGHT IT RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF MY PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE WORST AND MOST INCOMPETENT PRESIDENT EVER, CROOKED JOE BIDEN,” Trump posted. 

While his address in North Carolina had been expected to follow a similar critical line, Trump has been ordered by the judge in the New York case, Juan Marchan, not to attack witnesses, prosecutors or relatives of court staff — a limitation the Republican has blasted as “very unfair”.

Democrats hope to flip the battleground state of North Carolina after Trump’s victories there in 2016 and 2020.

Joe Biden lost the state to Trump by only 75,000 votes in 2020, the same year North Carolina’s Democratic governor won reelection.

With Trump set to be on trial possibly for weeks in New York — and facing more pending charges in Washington, Georgia and Florida — Biden has begun stepping up his own campaign appearances.