■ SOUTH KOREA
Ministry wants ban upheld
The Defense Ministry has asked the Constitutional Court to uphold a ban on homosexuals serving in the military, a ministry spokesman said yesterday. The ban has been under review since a local military court asked the upper tribunal in August to determine whether the existing military criminal code banning homosexuality among soldiers is constitutional. The code stipulates that soldiers be jailed for up to one year for engaging in homosexual acts or sexual harassment while in service. At stake is whether the military rules violate the constitutional right to equality, privacy and freedom of sexuality, defense officials said. Homosexuality is not illegal in South Korea but a defense ministry spokesman said it supported the ban for the military, and had urged the Constitutional Court to rule in its favor. “The military has a unique characteristics,” the spokesman said. “It has to maintain good combat capability. It requires a sound group life. It works for the public interest rather than personal happiness.”
■ INDONESIA
Earthquake kills man
A strong 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck off Sulawesi island early yesterday, killing one person, toppling homes as people slept and forcing thousands to flee houses and hotels. The quake triggered a tsunami warning from US officials for an area within 1,000km of the epicenter but a similar alert by Indonesia was withdrawn shortly after being issued. Rustam Pakaya, head of health ministry’s crisis center, said a 56-year-old man was killed in the village of Kwandang and 23 people injured. He added that houses and buildings had collapsed in Gorontalo Province. The US Geological Survey said the quake struck 136km off the coastal town of Gorontalo at a depth of 21km.■ EUROPEAN UNION
Danish women healthier
While Italian men and French women may live to be the oldest in Europe, a true dolce vita free of disability belongs to the Danes, UK researchers found. Women in Denmark, which has as many bikes as it has citizens, can expect 74.1 years of good health on average, while men may get about six months less, said scientists led by Carol Jagger, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Leicester. The study, published in The Lancet, compared how many more healthy years 50-year-old people may expect to have in 25 EU countries. While Italians topped the list of life expectancy among men at 80.4 years, they placed third for healthy years of life with 70.6 years. French women could expect to live the longest in Europe, to 85.4 years, but were in the lower half for health at 69.7 years.
■ BURKINA FASO
Bus crash claims 67
The toll in one of the nation’s deadliest road accidents rose to 67 on Sunday with the discovery of another body following the crash on Saturday, authorities said, warning it could rise further. “We have just discovered another body. The death toll is now at 67,” Maiza Compaore, a court prosecutor from Boromo, 167km west of the capital Ouagadougou, where the collision between a bus and truck happened. The cause of the tragedy was still unclear on Sunday. Officials said that aside from Burkinabe nationals, there were Ivorians aboard the bus, which was registered in Ivory Coast and owned by an Ivorian company.
■ RUSSIA
Politkovskaya trial starting
A trial into the killing of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was to open yesterday in a military court in Moscow, with supporters of the Kremlin critic fearing it would shed little light on the case. Despite protests from Politkovskaya’s relatives, the long-awaited trial is likely to be held behind closed doors because one of the defendants, Pavel Ryaguzov, is an agent with the Federal Security Service, the former KGB. Ryaguzov is suspected of having provided Politkovskaya’s home address to her killers and has been charged with abuse of office. Three other defendants, including a former police investigator, will also be tried for the killing. But the killer and whoever ordered her contract murder remain at large.
■ SPAIN
ETA chief nabbed in France
The alleged military head of the militant Basque separatist group ETA has been arrested in southern France by French and Spanish police, Spanish media reported yesterday. Mikel Garkoitz Asiazu Rubina, known by his alias Txeroki, was arrested at 3:30am with a woman at Cauterets ski resort near Lourdes in the Pyrenees in an coordinated operation between French and Spanish security forces, El Mundo newspaper reported. Both were armed and the police did not identify the woman. Txeroki, 35, has been the reputed head of ETA military operations for the past five years, and was responsible for ordering and planning its bomb attacks.
■ VATICAN
Don’t drink and drive: pope
Pope Benedict XVI urged drivers to stay “sober and alert” on Sunday and prayed for those who have died in traffic accidents. “On this third Sunday of November, we remember in a special way all those who have died as a result of traffic accidents,” Benedict said as he delivered the Angelus prayer in St Peter’s Square. An initiative by the European Federation of Road Traffic Victims has made the third Sunday of November a day of remembrance for road victims.
■ UNITED STATES
Bush Senior heckled
Former president George H.W. Bush faced a few hecklers on Sunday at the University of Kansas. The longest interruption of Bush’s remarks came as he discussed the first Gulf War in 1991. A man in the front of the auditorium shouted a question at Bush. When the moderator told him the university’s goal was to engage in a civil discussion, the heckler said: “There’s nothing civil about war or war crimes.” An officer escorted him and a woman from the auditorium. Bush also said that as the head of the US liaison office in China in the 1970s, he recalls Beijing’s leaders quoting from Mao Zedong (毛澤東) and talking about “the dictatorship of the proletariat and all that nonsense.” “I don’t believe there’s a communist left in the bureaucracy in China,” he said. “I don’t think they’re seeking control over their neighbors as they were back in the post-Vietnam War days.”
■ UNITED STATES
Illegal immigrants freed
Federal immigration officials freed thousands of inmates in the nation’s third-most populous county despite the suspects admitting they were in the country illegally, a newspaper investigation found. More than 3,500 inmates told jailers in Harris County, Texas, they were in the country illegally over an eight-month period starting in June last year, but records show Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) filed paperwork to detain only about a quarter of them.
■ EL SALVADOR
Archbishop opposes trial
The Roman Catholic archbishop of San Salvador opposes reopening the prosecution of Salvadoran officials in the 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests, he said on Sunday. Human rights activists have pushed for a trial of a former president and 14 other Salvadoran officials in Spain, where five of the killed Jesuits were born. Archbishop Fernando Saenz Lacalle called the killings at the height of the country’s 1980 to 1992 civil war “a frightful crime,” but said he was sure that former president Alfredo Cristiani was not involved. Human rights groups said Cristiani helped to cover up the crime.
■ JAMAICA
Shootings disrupt meeting
One man was shot dead and two others were wounded at the annual conference of the ruling party minutes before Prime Minister Bruce Golding was due to speak on Sunday, police and witnesses said. Finance Minister Audley Shaw was addressing thousands of supporters at the Jamaica Labour Party conference in Kingston and was preparing to hand the microphone to Golding when the shooting occurred behind the stage where members of the party hierarchy were sitting. Police pronounced one man dead at the scene. A few minutes later two other people were shot outside the venue. Party officials blamed the police for the shooting, though police have not taken responsibility.
■ COLOMBIA
Murder suspects fired
Bogota fired 10 army officers and three soldiers on Sunday in a widening scandal over the killing of innocent civilians. The soldiers and officers are accused of shooting seven young men in the northern province of Cordoba and passing the bodies off as leftist guerrillas killed in combat. The government fired 27 army officers last month after a probe implicated them in the deaths of another group of young men who disappeared from their homes and were later shot, piled into mass graves and counted as combat deaths. Similar cases have stiffened opposition in the US Congress to a proposed trade deal.
‘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
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
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