■ JAPAN
Police arrest US soldier
A US serviceman has been arrested for the alleged sexual assault of a Japanese woman, the latest in a series of criminal accusations sparking anger against US military bases. James Littlejohn, a 22-year-old airman first class who belongs to the Misawa Air Base, was arrested on Friday on charges of groping a 19-year-old woman in Hachinohe, a police spokesman said. Littlejohn allegedly forcibly touched the woman’s breasts and buttocks. He then fled in his car, but was taken into custody after police stopped him based on a description.
■ CHINA
Train victims confirmed
Forensic and DNA tests have confirmed the identities of the 72 people killed in the country’s deadliest train crash in a decade, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. A train traveling from Beijing to Qingdao derailed on Monday and collided with an oncoming train. Nine carriages from the first train tumbled into a ditch, while the second train was knocked askew on the tracks. The results of the identification tests conformed with information from the families of the victims, the report said. A government investigative panel has said the train was traveling at 131kph and blamed excessive speed for the crash in Zibo, a town in Shandong Province.
■ MALAYSIA
Cops seize 20kg of opium
Police seized 20kg of opium slabs worth some 70,000 ringgit (US$20,600) from a suspected dealer in the northern Penang state, a news report said yesterday. Police surrounded the car of the suspect, aged in his 30s, and discovered 20 slabs of opium after searching the vehicle, state police chief Salleh Mat Rasid said. “We planned for four days before deciding to act against the suspect,” he said. The suspect was believed to be waiting for a buyer at the time of arrest. Police said the man was being held for questioning before he is charged with drug possession and trafficking.
■ AFGHANISTAN
Mine kills British soldier
A British soldier serving with the NATO force died in an explosion that wounded two other troops, the alliance’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said yesterday. The soldier was killed after the vehicle he was traveling in hit a mine during a routine patrol near southern Helmand Province’s Naw Zad district on Friday, British Lieutenant Colonel Robin Matthews said. The soldiers were serving with the 40-country ISAF force which earlier confirmed the death but not the soldier’s nationality. The latest fatality takes to 48 the number of international soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year, most while fighting the Taliban.
■ PAKISTAN
Indian’s execution delayed
The execution of an Indian man condemned to death was delayed, the Foreign Ministry said yesterday. President Pervez Musharraf rejected Sarabjit Singh’s mercy plea in March, but deferred his execution by hanging until April 30 after a request from India. “The implementation on the orders of Sarabjit’s hanging has been stopped temporarily. It’s not clemency or anything else,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Sadiq said. He said the government would make a decision after consulting various ministries. Singh was sentenced to death in 1991 for spying and carrying out bomb blasts that killed 14 people, but his family said he was innocent and had crossed the border into Pakistan accidentally while he was drunk. Pakistani officials said Singh was arrested while trying to slip back into India after the blasts.
■ SOMALIA
Insurgents vow vengeance
A US airstrike that killed the suspected al-Qaida leader brought warnings of vengeance from Islamic insurgents and the threat of a boycott that could jeopardize peace talks with the UN-supported government. The biggest alliance supporting the Islamic insurgency said it might pull out of planned talks next Saturday on escalating fighting and a humanitarian crisis that has caused thousands of civilian deaths and displaced hundreds of thousands over the past year. “The US strike can undermine the UN-sponsored peace parlay,” said Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, exiled chairman of the Alliance for Liberation and Reconstitution of Somalia.
■ FRANCE
Mosquito invasion feared
Authorities in the south fear a possible mosquito invasion in tourist resorts this summer and blame EU regulations that prevent them from using the most efficient insecticide. The area affected runs from the Camargue down to the Spanish border. Agents from the Entente interdepartementale de demoustication (EID), which clears thousands of hectares of marshland each year, said the new rules are forcing them to carry out this year’s operation in record time, and with no guarantee of success, following recent rain. For the first time since the early 1960s they cannot use temephos — a pesticide now banned by the EU.
■ RUSSIA
Chance to curb AIDS: UN
A real opportunity exists to curb the AIDS epidemic in eastern Europe and central Asia, provided current progress can be stepped up and kept up, a top UN official said on Friday. “The region has all the necessary human intellectual and infrastructures assets to make this a success,” said Peter Piot, executive director of the UN AIDS panel UNAIDS and UN assistant secretary general, speaking on the eve of an AIDS conference in Moscow. “I think it’s fair to say that in this region we’re at a critical turning point,” he said during a telephone conference. “If current progress can be accelerated and sustained, there is a real chance to stop HIV,” the virus that causes AIDS. But “looking at the epidemics, it’s clear that we are still in a very dynamic phase of the epidemic,” he said.
■ YEMEN
Troops clash with rebels
A government official said clashes between troops and Shiite rebels had resumed overnight in the aftermath of a bombing near a mosque in the north, where 18 worshippers died. The official says three soldiers and four of the rebels of Abdel-Malek al-Hawthi group have been killed in clashes in the remote mountain province of Saada near the Saudi border. Meanwhile, families buried yesterday their beloved ones killed when a bomb rigged to motorcycle blew up after Friday prayers, the official said.
■ GREECE
Island swarmed by migrants
Fair weather and calm seas have seen ever more illegal migrants arrive from Turkey on the island of Leros, prompting an appeal to Athens for help yesterday. The eastern Aegean region’s prefect Ioannis Makhairidis called on central government authorities to declare a state of emergency on Leros after 300 more migrants — many of them minors — arrived there over the past three days. These swelled the already large numbers of migrants, which making it impossible for the local 8,000 population to sustain normal life, ANA news agency reported. It said a total of 115,000 illegal immigrants have arrived over the past 12 months.
■ UNITED STATES
Disorderly bride guilty
A bride and groom arrested at their wedding reception after the bride trashed a set of conga drums in a spat with the band have pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct. The bride was also accused of breaking a speaker in a dispute over the music at the April 5 reception in the Port Chester, New York. Fabiana Reyes has been sentenced in Village Court to the six days she already spent in jail. The 41-year-old also paid the band US$1,500 for the damage. Her 42-year-old husband, Elmo Fernandez, and their 21-year-old daughter, Helen, also pleaded guilty to interfering with Reyes’ arrest.. The daughter says the couple were legally married in 1986 but delayed their church wedding until last month.
■ UNITED STATES
Nanny takes on coyote
A California nanny pulled a two-year-old girl from the jaws of a coyote when the animal attacked the toddler and tried to carry her away in its mouth, officials said. The girl was playing on Friday in a sandbox at Alterra Park in Chino Hills in San Bernardino County. Around 10:30am, the caretaker heard screaming and saw a coyote trying to carry the child off in its mouth, officials said. The babysitter grabbed the child and pulled her from the coyote’s grasp, the sheriff’s department said in a statement. The coyote ran into nearby brush. The child was treated for wounds to her buttocks, but was released.
■ UNITED STATES
Defendant arraigned in lot
A suburban New York music shop owner accused of selling knockoff Gibson Les Paul guitars has been arraigned in a pickup truck in a courthouse parking lot after his lawyer said the 227kg defendant could not walk into the courthouse. State Supreme Court Justice Robert Doyle said the man’s “severe weight problem” prompted the unusual proceeding on Thursday in Riverhead. A defense lawyer also had given the court a doctor’s letter.
■ UNITED STATES
Ex-death row inmate freed
A former death row inmate was freed on Friday after prosecutors dropped all charges against him in a killing in which his conviction was overturned two years ago. Levon Jones was convicted of robbing and shooting to death an alcohol bootlegger in 1987 in North Carolina. After his conviction in 1993, based largely on the testimony of his former girlfriend, Jones spent 13 years on death row. Appeals lawyers argued that his original defense at trial was incompetent, partly for failing to challenge the weak credibility of the girlfriend. In 2006, a federal judge agreed and threw out the original conviction, but Jones remained in jail awaiting retrial. A few weeks ago, the girlfriend recanted her testimony, saying that she had mostly lied in the trial. On Friday, North Carolina prosecutors dropped the charges against Jones, saying that they no longer had enough evidence to pursue a retrial.
■ CANADA
Corpse found in freezer
A man from La Prairie, Quebec, was arrested on Friday after his mother’s corpse was found stuffed inside a freezer at their condemned home south of Montreal. Police made the grisly discovery on Thursday while searching the son’s home after a local clinic reported it had not heard from the 73-year-old woman for weeks, said police sergeant Martine Isabelle. The woman’s 50-year-old son, Daniel Martin, turned himself in to police on Thursday, said Isabelle. Isabelle said an autopsy could not be performed on Friday because the corpse was still frozen.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of