■NEPAL
Police detain 562 protesters
Police detained 562 Tibetan women at an anti-China rally in Kathmandu yesterday, the first all-women protest against Chinese rule in their homeland, officials said. Some shouted “we want free Tibet,” while others wept as they were dragged along the road to police vans and trucks and driven to detention centers. Many were wearing black armbands and had their mouths gagged with cloths. Nepal considers Tibet part of China, a key donor and trade partner, and has been cracking down on protests by exiled Tibetans against Beijing. Police said the protesters would be freed later. Exiled Tibetans have been protesting regularly ever since deadly riots broke out in the Tibetan capital Lhasa in March. “We are not against Nepal. Our protests are against China. So why are they arresting us?” asked a 70-year-old protester.
■JAPAN
PM to set emissions targets
Japan aims to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by between 60 percent and 80 percent by 2050, news reports said yesterday, as part of measures setting out the country’s long term environmental goals. Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda is expected to announce the target as early as next month, the Nikkei Shimbun and Asahi Shimbun said. For the year to March, Japan’s total volume of greenhouse gas emissions was estimated at 1,341 million tonnes, up 6.4 percent from the 1990 level, used as the base year for the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Tokyo is still discussing details of the plan ahead of Japan hosting the G8 summit in July, the Asahi said. Officials want to make the goal not legally binding, but they hope the announcement will encourage technological and business innovations in the environmental field, the newspaper said.
■UNITED STATES
Pelican injures swimmer
A swimmer is recovering after a pelican apparently diving for fish slammed into her face off Florida. Debbie Shoemaker was in the water on Thursday near St Petersburg when the pelican’s beak opened a gash in her face. She needed 20 stitches. The bird died. The chief of the St Petersburg Fire Department says he never heard of a diving pelican colliding with anyone. An expert surmises the bird was diving for fish and hit Shoemaker by accident. The 50-year-old woman returned home on Friday.
■BRAZIL
Prison inmates escape
Twenty-nine inmates broke out of a prison in the southeastern part of the coutry in an escape that local media blamed on a security breakdown after a contract with guards expired. Police said on Saturday that the prisoners had escaped the previous night from the Novo Horizonte lockup near Vitoria, the capital of Espirito Santo State. Globo TV network reported on its Web site that inmates cut wire fences inside the yard and then broke through a wall. Four were recaptured on Saturday, Globo said. A woman who answered the phone at the Espirito Santo state police department confirmed that 29 inmates broke out Friday, but she declined to provide further details or give her name.
■UNITED STATES
Five corpses found
The bodies of five people, including three young children, were found on Saturday afternoon on a sprawling property with several structures in Houston, Texas, police said. A neighbor made the grisly discovery after seeing a man’s body on porch next to a .22-caliber rifle, police Lieutenant Dan Harris said. The bodies of a woman and a boy were found in a shack on the property, Harris said. The bodies of a boy and girl were found in another shack. The children were believed to be between ages four and nine. Investigators declined to speculate on the causes of death, although they said there were no obvious signs of a struggle. They also declined to release identities of the victims or say whether they were related.
■VENEZUELA
Chavez backs Beijing
President Hugo Chavez condemned pro-Tibet protests and backed China ahead of the Olympics in Beijing. The socialist president accused the US government of trying to “sabotage” the August Olympic Games and of aiding protests focused on Tibet. Chavez said he would back China against what he sees as a “secessionist” attempt in Tibet. The US considers Tibet a part of China and says it is concerned about violence in Tibet, but will refrain from meddling in China’s internal affairs. Chavez spoke on Friday night after meeting Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu (回良玉). Venezuelan and Chinese officials also signed cooperative accords.
■UNITED STATES
Six die in car collision
An official in the Erie County Coroner’s office said six people died in a two-car accident in Pennsylvania, near the border with Ohio. Chief deputy coroner Korac Timon said that four men and two women died on Saturday when the minivan they were traveling in crossed the median and hit a car head-on at about 4pm. The van came to rest on its roof. Timon said a seventh person in the van and the woman driving the other car were taken to a hospital. Both are expected to survive. Officials did not release names of those involved in the accident.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing