BEIJING: A fire engulfed a skyscraper Friday in the central Chinese city of Changsha, with authorities saying that no casualties had yet been found. The blaze broke out in a 42-floor building housing an office of state-owned telecommunications company China Telecom, according to state broadcaster CCTV. “Thick smoke billowed from the site, and dozens of floors burned ferociously,” CCTV reported. The provincial fire department said later in a social media post that “at present, the fire has been extinguished, and we have not yet discovered any casualties.” An initial photograph released by CCTV showed orange flames searing through the building in a built-up area of the city as black smoke billowed into the sky. A later image shared on social media appeared to show that the flames had subsided, as emergency personnel sprayed jets of water onto its charred facade. China Telecom said in a statement on social media: “By around 4:30 p.m. today, the fire at our No. 2 Communications Tower in Changsha has been extinguished. “No casualties have yet been discovered and communications have not been cut off.” A video shared on social media appeared to show dozens of people fleeing the building as flaming debris fell from the upper floors. AFP was not immediately able to verify the footage. Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, has a population of about 10 million people. The 218-meter (715-foot) building was completed in 2000 and is located near a major ring road, according to CCTV. Deadly fires are common in China, where lax enforcement of building codes and rampant unauthorized construction can make it difficult for people to flee burning buildings. In July last year, a warehouse fire in northeastern Jilin province killed at least 15 people and injured at least 25, according to state media reports. The month before that, a fire killed 18 people — mostly children — at a martial arts school in central Henan province, causing an uproar over fire safety standards. A further two dozen people died in a pair of blazes in Beijing’s migrant neighborhoods in 2017, while 58 perished when a huge fire swept through a 28-story Shanghai housing block in 2010.

COLOMBO: A Sri Lankan court issued a summons on Friday ordering an ex-president to appear in a case alleging he failed to prevent suicide bomb attacks in 2019 that killed nearly 270 people. The court ordered ex-President Maithripala Sirisena to appear on Oct. 14 in a complaint filed by a Catholic priest and a worshipper saying his negligence led to the near-simultaneous bomb blasts in three churches and three tourist hotels on Easter Sunday 2019. The complaint was filed by the Rev. Cyril Gamini, spokesperson for the archdiocese of Colombo, and Jesuraj Ganeshan, who said he lost one leg in a blast at a church where he was attending Easter services. It says Sirisena, who was also defense minister, minister in charge of law and order, and head of the armed forces, failed to take action in response to many prior warnings that a radical Islamic group was preaching violence against non-believers. It also said Sirisena left on a personal trip to Singapore just days before the blasts without naming anyone to oversee his duties while he was away. The failure to prevent the blasts has been blamed on a communication breakdown and lack of coordination between Sirisena and current President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was then prime minister in the coalition government. Authorities have filed charges against several people allegedly involved in the attacks, but the local Catholic church has said the real culprits could still be at large.

DHAKA: Bangladesh is seeking to tap into the Saudi market to increase its presence in the Middle East, the country’s export promotion body told Arab News ahead of a trade and investment fair in Riyadh.

Most of Bangladesh’s exports to Saudi Arabia have until now targeted its 2.5 million expatriate community living and working in the Kingdom. The Export Promotion Bureau under the Bangladeshi Ministry of Commerce is hopeful that with the upcoming Trade and Investment Fair 2022, which it will hold in Riyadh on Oct. 6-8, it will be able to help increase Dhaka’s currently insignificant stake in the Saudi market. Last year, Bangladeshi exports to Saudi Arabia were about $300 million. The EPB seeks to increase them by the end of this year to $350 million and expand trade activity to other countries in the region. “From Saudi Arabia, we can also do our marketing in Arab and Middle Eastern countries,” the bureau’s Vice Chairman A. H. M. Ahsan told Arab News.

The Export Promotion Bureau under the Bangladeshi Ministry of Commerce is hopeful that with the upcoming Trade and Investment Fair 2022, which it will hold in Riyadh on Oct. 6-8, it will be able to help increase Dhaka’s currently insignificant stake in the Saudi market.

“We have also targeted Saudi Arabia as one of our export destinations, mainly because of the presence of a large number of expatriates and the strategic location of Saudi Arabia.” The EPB is planning to diversify the country’s trade portfolio, which currently is dominated by the garment sector — the No. 1 industry in Bangladesh, employing over 4 million people, contributing over 11 percent of the country’s GDP and accounting for 80 percent of its exports. “Instead of exporting readymade garments or food items, we are pushing for light engineering products,” Ahsan said. The garment sector is, however, also looking to increase its presence in the Kingdom. “Saudi Arabia and Middle Eastern countries collect our clothing products from different parts of the world,” Md. Nurul Islam, director of Impress-Newtex Composite Textiles, which produces apparel for international brands such as H&M and Zara, told Arab News. “We produce clothes for these major brands. But while visiting shops in the Kingdom, we see these clothes were made in Bangladesh. So, why should we remain idle? It’s better to create our own market in Saudi Arabia.” His company will be one of the exhibitors participating in October’s fair, which he expects to considerably expand the Bangladeshi garment industry’s prospects in the region. “There will be many other producers showcasing their goods. Through these stalls, we will try to meet the buyers over there,” he said. “In comparison with other competitors in the Saudi Arabian market, we are significantly lagging behind. But I believe in the next three to four years, we can increase our export volume up to $3-4 billion.” The fair will also focus on attracting Saudi investment to Bangladesh, following a boost in ties after Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan’s visit to Dhaka in March this year, when the two countries held their first ever political consultation talks. During the visit, Bangladeshi Foreign Minister A.K. Abdul Momen pledged Dhaka’s support for Saudi entities interested in investing in the country, which was preparing more than 100 special economic zones for potential investors.

ISLAMABAD: Floodwaters are receding in Pakistan’s worst-hit southern Sindh province, officials said on Friday, a potentially bright sign in an ongoing crisis that has left hundreds of thousands of people homeless in the impoverished South Asian country. The Indus River, which remained swollen until earlier this month, was now rushing at “normal” levels towards the Arabian Sea, according to Mohammad Irfan, an irrigation official in hard-hit Sindh. The water level in the past 48 hours receded as much as three feet in some of the inundated areas nearby, including the Khairpur and Johi towns, where waist-high water damaged crops and homes earlier this month.

The Indus River, which remained swollen until earlier this month, was now rushing at ‘normal’ levels towards the Arabian Sea, according to Mohammad Irfan, an irrigation official in hard-hit Sindh.

A day earlier, engineers had opened a key highway in the southwestern Balochistan province, allowing rescue workers to speed aid to those suffering in a race against the spread of waterborne diseases and dengue fever. Still, hundreds of thousands of people in Sindh are living in makeshift homes and tents. Authorities say it will take months to completely drain the water in Sindh. Nationwide, floods have damaged 1.8 million homes, washed away roads and destroyed nearly 400 bridges, according to the National Disaster Management Authority. The deluge has killed 1,508 people since mid-June, inundated millions of acres of land and affected 33 million people. More than half a million people have been left homeless. At one point, nearly a third of the impoverished country was underwater. Several economists say the cost of the disaster may reach $30 billion. Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif has urged developed countries, especially those behind climate change, to scale up aid to his country. Sharif on Friday met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Uzbekistan on the sidelines of a summit of a security group and thanked him for sending aid, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said.

The previous day, scientists and experts in the latest study about ongoing floods in Pakistan said that the country’s overall vulnerability, including people living in harm’s way, was the chief factor in the disaster. But “climate change” also played a role in causing heavy rains, which triggered flooding in the country. August rainfall in the Sindh and Baluchistan provinces — together nearly the size of Spain — was at least seven times normal amounts, while the country as a whole had more than triple its normal rainfall.

That’s according to the report by World Weather Attribution, a collection of mostly volunteer scientists from around the world who do real-time studies of extreme weather to look for evidence of climate change. In Pakistan, the country’s minister for climate change, Sherry Rehman, was the first to publicly blame the developed world for causing climate-induced unusually heavy monsoon rains, which started in June and are expected to continue this month. “Pakistan, at least in the south, is totally inundated. Outside of Karachi, go a little further up in Sindh and you will see an ocean of water, with no break,” she tweeted recently. “Where to place the tents, where to find dry ground? How to feed 33 million people plus? How to get them healthcare? Help us.”

LIMA: Peru has renewed diplomatic ties with the partially recognized Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic in Western Sahara, its Foreign Ministry said, reversing a recent decision to favor Morocco. Lima said last month it was pursuing closer relations with Morocco and cutting links with the SADR, which Rabat sees as a claim on a sovereign part of its territory. But Peru’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday it would “renew its diplomatic relations with the SADR,” reiterating “the right to free self-determination of the Saharawi people” in accordance with Resolution 1514 of the UN General Assembly.

Peru’s Foreign Ministry said it would ‘renew its diplomatic relations with the SADR,’ reiterating ‘the right to free self-determination of the Saharawi people’ in accordance with Resolution 1514 of the UN General Assembly.

Leftist president Pedro Castillo re-established ties in September 2021 with the SADR, which is administered by the Polisario Front independence movement, in one of his first major foreign policy decisions. But his government has been wracked by political instability since he took office in July 2021 with his fourth foreign minister resigning last week. The resignation of Miguel Rodriguez Mackay, who stepped down on Sept. 10 after playing a key role in the warming of ties with Rabat, has brought the relationship back to where it started. Castillo appointed Cesar Landa as the country’s new foreign minister on Wednesday. The disputed status of Western Sahara — a former Spanish colony considered a “non-self-governing territory” by the UN — has pitted Morocco against the Algeria-backed Polisario Front since the 1970s. Rabat, which controls nearly 80 percent of the territory, is pushing for autonomy under its sovereignty. The Polisario Front, however, wants a referendum on self-determination.

DUBAI: Uber Technologies Inc. said it was investigating a cybersecurity incident after a report of a network breach that forced the company to shut several internal communications and engineering systems. On Friday, Uber said it had no evidence that the incident involved access to sensitive user data such as trip histories and that internal software tools that the company had taken after the hack were coming back online. Uber began investigating the cybersecurity incident on Thursday. A hacker compromised an employee’s account on workplace messaging app Slack and used it to send a message to Uber employees announcing that the company had suffered a data breach, according to a New York Times report https://nyti.ms/3QMveIu on Thursday that cited an Uber spokesperson. Cybersecurity has been an issue for Uber in the past. It suffered a significant hack in 2016 that exposed the personal information of about 57 million of its customers and drivers. Shares of the ride-hailing firm were down nearly 4 percent on Friday amid broader US market declines. It appeared the hacker was able to gain access to other internal systems, posting an explicit photo on an internal information page for employees, the Times report added. “We are in touch with law enforcement and will post additional updates here as they become available,” Uber said in a tweet https://bit.ly/3qHx2rv, without providing further details. The hacker has claimed they have gained access to security vulnerability information produced by HackerOne for Uber. Such confidential information could be used for further breaches at the company. HackerOne said they are “in close contact with Uber’s security team, have locked their data down, and will continue to assist with their investigation,” according to Chris Evans, HackerOne’s chief hacking officer. Security researcher Bill Demirkapi said screenshots circulating online did seem to corroborate the hacker or hackers boast that they had access to Uber’s internal systems. “This story is still developing and these are some extreme claims, but there does appear to be evidence to support it,” he said in a message posted to Twitter. Uber employees were instructed to not use Salesforce Inc. -owned office messaging app Slack, according to the NYT report. “I announce I am a hacker and Uber has suffered a data breach,” the message read, and went on to list several internal databases that were allegedly compromised, the report added. A person assumed responsibility for the hack and told the paper he had sent a text message to an Uber employee claiming to be a corporate IT person. The worker was persuaded to hand over a password that allowed the hacker to gain access to Uber’s systems, the report said. Uber Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi, who took charge a year after the 2016 hack, fired the then chief security officer, who was later charged with trying to cover up the breach.