■ SOUTH KOREA
Double suicide was murder
A man arrested last week on charges of murdering his wife and child has confessed to killing his parents, whose death was originally believed to be suicide, police said on Sunday. The elderly couple died of severe burns when their house caught fire two years ago, and police said on Sunday they had reopened the case after the victims’ 42-year-old son said he was behind the blaze. The man, identified only as Kim, was arrested last week for allegedly stabbing his wife and strangling his two-year-old daughter. The Yonhap news agency, quoting an unnamed officer, said Kim probably committed the crimes for money.
■SRI LANKA
Soldiers capture key town
Soldiers captured a key town on the main highway to the headquarters of the country’s Tamil rebels, 18 years after the insurgents seized the area by overrunning an army camp, the military said yesterday. Troops seized Kokavil town, some 20km south of the insurgents’ de facto capital of Kilinochchi on Sunday, military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said. He did not give casualty details. The capture was the latest sign of the government’s dominance in the island’s decades-old civil war.
■CHINA
Miners killed in blast
A coal mine blast in the north killed 15 miners and three rescuers died in a cave-in yesterday morning. Fifteen miners were confirmed dead after the gas explosion on Sunday afternoon in the Changlong Coal Mine in Heilongjiang Province, Xinhua news agency said. Twenty-five people were in the mine but 10 escaped. The cause of the explosion is still under investigation. The report said three of the more than 100 rescuers at the site were killed in yesterday’s cave-in. Heilongjiang and company officials could not be reached immediately yesterday for comment.
■AFGHANISTAN
District governor shot
A district governor was shot dead yesterday by two men on a motorcycle, a government official said, in a killing claimed by the Taliban movement. The governor of the volatile Andar District in the province of Ghazni, south of Kabul, was killed as he left his home, provincial government spokesman Ismail Jahangir said. “Abdul Rahim Desiwal was moving to Ghazni town ... when he was attacked by two motorcycle riders and he was he martyred and his guard was wounded,” he said. “This is the Taliban’s work.” A spokesman for the Taliban confirmed the militia had carried out the assassination. “Our men killed Abdul Rahim Desiwal when he left his house,” Zabihullah Mujahed said.
■MYANMAR
Court jails journalists
A court has imprisoned two journalists for seven years each for undermining the country’s ruling generals after being caught with a UN human rights report. The court on Friday sentenced Thet Zin, editor of the local Myanmar-language journal Myanmar Nation, and Sein Win Maung, the paper’s manager, after convicting them of undermining the government under the country’s draconian Printing and Publishing Law. The convictions were part of a renewed crackdown by the regime in the past month that has led to more than 100 people — including activists, writers, musicians and Buddhist monks — receiving jail sentences as long as 68 years. Many were transferred to prisons in remote regions.
■RUSSIA
Arrest warrant issued
Moscow has asked Interpol to detain a suspect over the 2006 murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, the country’s general prosecutor told TV on Sunday. “We know who carried out this crime and he is now the subject of an international arrest warrant,” general prosecutor Yuri Chayka said in an interview with state TV. He said the authorities were working with the international police agency Interpol. “I was at Interpol recently and discussed the question during meeting with the secretary general of Interpol. Now we are working actively on this,” the official said. Politkovskaya was shot dead outside her Moscow home on Oct. 7, 2006, in an apparent contract killing.
■IRAQ
Soldiers’ remains exchanged
Baghdad and Tehran on Sunday exchanged the remains of 241 soldiers killed during the eight-year war between the two countries — the latest sign of increased cooperation between the neighboring countries that were fierce rivals under former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. It was the first such handover since the two sides signed an agreement in October to work together in tracing tens of thousands still missing after the war. The two countries have previously exchanged remains and prisoners of war, but Sunday’s pomp-filled ceremony raised hope that the agreement could lead to closure for the relatives of those killed or missing on both sides.
■ISRAEL
Relief aid turned back
The navy turned back a Libyan ship yesterday as it tried to transport humanitarian aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip, Palestinian officials said. They said the ship, Al-Marwa, sailed instead to a port in Egypt. It had departed from Libya last Monday, carrying 3,000 tonnes of food, medicine and other aid, Palestinian and Libyan officials said. The Jewish state said there had been no physical confrontation between its naval vessels and the Libyan ship. “They understood that the navy was there and decided to turn around,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Andy David said. “We have a very clear policy [on the blockade], which is constantly publicized.”
■SWITZERLAND
Cannabis still illegal
Voters on Sunday rejected a proposition to decriminalize cannabis for personal consumption, but voted by a large majority to extend a government program that gives heroin to hardcore addicts. In a surprise, voters chose to remove the statute of limitations on acts of pedophilia, despite government opposition to the proposal, which was put forward by parents’ groups. This put sexual offenses against children on equal footing with genocide and war crimes, the only other crimes that have no statute of limitations under the law.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Vitamins dealt a blow
The notion that antioxidant supplements such as vitamins C and E could slow aging has been dealt a blow by a scientific study showing that the theory behind the advice is wrong. David Gems, at University College London, who led the study, said: “It really demonstrates finally that trying to boost your antioxidant levels is very unlikely to have any effect on aging.” The dominant theory about how aging happens, which has been around since the 1950s, blames glitches in cells caused by the damaging byproducts of our metabolism. As cells break down sugars to release energy they also unleash reactive forms of oxygen such as superoxide.
■UNITED STATES
Space shuttle returns
Space shuttle Endeavour and its seven astronauts safely returned to Earth on Sunday, taking a detour to sunny California after storms hit the main landing strip in Florida. Endeavour wrapped up a 16-day trip that left the International Space Station freshly remodeled and capable of housing bigger crews. The shuttle dropped off all kinds of home improvement equipment, including a new bathroom, kitchenette, exercise machine, two sleeping quarters and a recycling system designed to convert astronauts’ urine and sweat into drinking water. But the mission wasn’t without its problems. Astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper let go of a US$100,000 tool bag during the first spacewalk, muttering “Oh, great” as it floated away.
■MEXICO
Nine decapitated in Tijuana
Nine decapitated bodies were found on Sunday in a vacant lot in the city of Tijuana across the border from San Diego, California, in the latest gruesome attack involving drug cartels, local officials said. The crime is part of a turf war between rival cartels for control of Tijuana, said Jose Manuel Yepiz, attorney general for the state of Baja California. Five other murders were committed in Tijuana since Saturday. Mexico’s border region from Tijuana east to Ciudad Juarez across from El Paso, Texas, has seen most of the drug cartel-related violence that has killed 350 people since early September. More than 4,500 people have been murdered in Mexico, mostly in drug gang warfare, since early this year.
■UNITED STATES
New rules worry Muslims
Some Arab and Muslim-Americans say new Justice Department guidelines that boost the FBI’s power to investigate suspected terrorists could target innocent people. The revised guidelines going into effect today will allow agents to use undercover sources to gather information, interview people without identifying themselves and spy on suspects without evidence of wrongdoing. Critics say the rules will allow for abuses, including more racial and religious profiling. Federal officials say current rules came about in the 1970s and limit their ability to investigate people in national security cases.
■MEXICO
Calderon firm in drug war
President Felipe Calderon pledged on Sunday to clean up corruption within his administration and vowed that his government would never negotiate with drug lords. Promising to continue the battle against organized crime, no matter how violent it gets, Calderon said he would push US president-elect Barack Obama to do his part north of the border. Calderon has long said the US must do more to fight drug consumption and stop the illegal flow of weapons south. Obama has said he would do both.
■ZIMBABWE
Government ignores ruling
The government has rejected a regional court ruling that said 78 white farmers could keep their farms despite Harare’s land reform scheme, state newspaper the Herald reported yesterday. “They [the tribunal] are day-dreaming because we are not going to reverse the land reform exercise,” the Minister of State for National Security, Lands, Land Reform and Resettlement, Didymus Mutasa, told the newspaper. Mutasa was reacting to Friday’s ruling by the Southern African Development Community tribunal that said the farmers could keep their farms because Harare’s land reform scheme discriminated against them.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in 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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was