■ Afghanistan
US releases 80 prisoners
Some 80 Afghan prisoners held as terrorism suspects have been released from the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan's Supreme Court said Sunday. "Around 80 prisoners have been brought from Guantanamo and they will be freed today after Supreme Court officials speak to them," court spokesman Wahid Mozhda told the press. The US had previously released some 200 prisoners from its remote base on the southeastern tip of Cuba where suspects were first taken bound and shackled three years ago in the wake of the US-led war in Afghanistan.
■ Nepal
Maoists kidnap 14 soldiers
Nepal's Maoist rebels have kidnapped 14 Indian soldiers from the Gurkha regiment while they were on their way home on leave, it was reported yesterday. The soldiers were kidnapped Friday from Kailali district, a Maoist stronghold 665km west of the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, India's state-run Doordarshan television reported, quoting an army official. "The soldiers are reported to have been kidnapped from the bus they were travelling in," the officer said. The official said there was no word from the Maoists on their demands or why the soldiers had been kidnapped. An official with the Indian embassy in Kathmandu told the Indian Express newspaper that senior officials and others in Nepal had been contacted. He said it could be a case of mistaken identity.
■ Philippines
Gunman kills 7 at festival
At least seven people, including the police chief of the province of Aklan, were killed and 30 wounded yesterday when a gunman opened fire at a religious festival in the central Philippines. The Ati-atihan festival in honor of Santo Nino, one of the most revered Roman Catholic icons in the Philippines, was stopped, turning merrymaking into mourning for the victims. "We're still investigating the motive for the violent shooting," said the national police chief. "We're checking reports that this incident was drug-related, but we can't discount other angles." He said the provincial police chief was walking towards the municipal building after attending mass when a gunman opened fire at his group, sending hundreds scampering for safety. The shooting began during a fireworks display to start the festival in Kalibo town.
■ China
Activist farmers sentenced
A court in northern China's Shaanxi province has sentenced 27 farmers to up to 15 years in prison after convicting them of illegal gatherings and disturbing public order in an anti-government property dispute, state press said Sunday. The Yulin city court also convicted the 27 of involvement in organizing three demonstrations protesting local government tactics in the acquisition of village lands. The protests, involving up to 500 villagers, disrupted a construction project in March last year and led to the blockade of the neighboring Yuyang village government building in April, the report said. Gao Lading, fingered as the main organizer of the protests, was sentenced to 15 years; five others were also sentenced. They also organized a May 23 protest in which government officials and police were illegally detained for 41 hours while around 300 villagers took over the village's Communist Party offices for 133 days, according to the report.
■ United States
Teacher jailed for sex
A former teacher and coach at a church school was sentenced to 10 years in prison after he was convicted of having sex with a 12-year-old student. Mark Vail, 27, who has insisted he was innocent, pounded his fist on a lawyer's table after the guilty verdict was read Friday. "I did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong," he yelled. Vail was removed from the courtroom by two security officers. "You did this to your family," Vail shouted, pointing back at his accuser as he disappeared behind a security door. Vail was arrested in January last year after the girl's parents discovered the relationship through her cell phone records.
■ South Africa
Cleric pardoned for theft
South Africa's flamboyant anti-apartheid cleric Allan Boesak -- convicted 6 years ago for stealing donor funds -- has been officially pardoned, a spokesman for President Thabo Mbeki said on Saturday. Boesak, a prominent anti-apartheid campaigner during the 1980s, served one year of a three-year prison sentence after being convicted of stealing 1.3 million rand (US$217,000) in donor funds intended to help victims of apartheid. He was released from prison in May 2001 and asked Mbeki for a pardon in 2003.
■ Austria
`Ghost' woman imprisoned
A Polish woman who harbored a grudge against her husband's employer has been sentenced to four months' imprisonment for terrorizing the boss by making ghostly sounds at his castle-like estate. The 42-year-old woman, whose name was not released, was convicted Friday on nuisance charges after she allegedly spent weeks masquerading as a ghost and making mysterious noises, Austrian television reported. Police captured the woman on videotape after the jittery owner, who employed the suspect's husband, begged authorities in the alpine province of South Tyrol to solve the mystery. The haunted owner had complained of hearing footsteps in the hallways and slamming doors late at night at the estate.
■ South Africa
AIDS plagues Mandelas
Nelson Mandela's grandson followed the former president's example by telling thousands of mourners at his father's funeral that his mother had also died of AIDS a year earlier. Mandla Mandela was speaking Saturday at the funeral of his father Makgatho, 54, Nelson Mandela's last surviving son. Hours after Makgatho died in a Johannesburg hospital last week, Mandela announced that his son was HIV positive and had died of AIDS-related complications. Mandela said his announcement was a plea for everyone to be more open about the disease, which kills about 600 South Africans a day.
■ Netherlands
War criminal turns self in
A Bosnian Serb wanted on charges of killing and torture of prisoners in a concentration camp during the 1990s was transferred to The Hague Saturday for trial before a war crimes tribunal after giving himself up. Savo Todovic, wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia, had turned himself in to the Bosnian Serb interior ministry, and was accompanied to The Hague.
■ Mozambique
UK cancels debt
Britain canceled Mozam-bique's debt of US$150 million and said it would pay a percentage of the impover-ished country's other foreign debt to aid development and fight poverty. "This gesture will contribute to the develop-ment of education and health sectors," Prime Minister Luisa Diogo said on Saturday after talks with Britain's visiting Treasury chief Gordon Brown and outgoing President Joaquim Chissano. Brown, who announced cancellation of the debt to Britain, said his government is also offering to pay 10 percent of Mozam-bique's multilateral debt owed to the World Bank, the IMF and the African Development Bank. The total debt is US$2 billion.
■ Kuwait
Police bust militant cell
Kuwait beefed up security yesterday after police busted a Saudi-style suspected Islamist militant cell in a three-hour shootout that left a Saudi gunman dead and two policemen wounded. Three Kuwaiti militants were arrested in Saturday's gunbattle as security forces hunted several others who fled after special forces backed by armored vehicles and helicopters stormed a house in Umm Al-Haiman, south of the capital. Interior ministry undersecretary General Nasser al-Othman put most of the emirate's security forces on full alert while a security source said that at least two of the militants at large were Saudi nationals.
■ United Kingdom
Fraudster voted best TV MP
When British TV bosses devised an innovative political talent show to find a new would-be MP, Rodney Hylton-Potts was probably not what they had in mind as an eventual winner. The convicted fraudster won the show's public vote with a manifesto promising the mandatory castration of pedophiles, legalizing all drugs and deporting immigrants so as to reduce Britain's population by 20 million. The program, Vote For Me, was intended to boost flagging public interest in politics by subjecting would-be lawmakers to public scrutiny.
■ Croatia
Rival campaigns hard
Croatia's President Stipe Mesic was being challenged yesterday by a determined rival, Cabinet minister Jadranka Kosor, in a runoff election to chose the president that could lead this former Yugoslav country to join the EU. Mesic, 70, praised by many at home and abroad for moving the country closer to the West, missed outright re-election by just one percentage point, receiving about 49 percent of the votes in the first round on Jan. 2. Kosor, 51, the minister in charge of families and war veterans, came in second with 20 percent. She has since waged a fervent campaign t as she seeks to become Croatia's first woman president.
■ United Kingdom
Troops damaging Babylon
The British Museum says US-led coalition forces in Babylon have crushed part of the ancient Iraqi city's 2,600-year-old brick paved streets with their tanks and used soil containing archaeological fragments to fill sand bags. The museum is concerned that US-led troops, including US Marines and the Polish-led force who have occupied the ancient Mesopotamian capit-al, have inflicted widespread damage to the ancient center of civilization, according to a report released on Saturday. "This is tantamount to establishing a military camp around the Great Pyramid in Egypt or around Stonehenge in Britain," wrote the report's author, John Curtis, the curator of the museum's Near East department.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in