■PAKISTAN
Taliban kill Afghan man
Taliban militants shot dead an abducted Afghan in the lawless northwest tribal region, accusing him of spying for the US, an official said yesterday. The bullet-riddled body of Islam-ud-din was found dumped by the road in the Sheratalla area, 40km north of Miranshah, the main town in the troubled North Waziristan region. “Islam, who was kidnapped two weeks ago, had multiple bullet wounds on his body,” police official Mehboob Khan said. A note found on the body said he was “spying for the US,” the official said.
■CHINA
Dragon dancers protest
At least three police officers and 10 civilians were hurt in a riot when traditional dragon dancers protested over being banned from performing, police and state media said yesterday. The disturbance occurred on Sunday in Guizhou Province after police banned the dance out of safety concerns, Xinhua news agency said. The dancers went to the local government in Dejiang County to stage a protest dance but were stopped by police. Clashes ensued that drew in crowds of more than 2,000 people, it said. The Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said the incident drew crowds of more than 10,000 people and at least 50 people were injured. An official with Dejiang’s Public Security Bureau said dragon dancers in Dejiang wear fireworks and consume alcohol, creating a risk.
■INDIA
UK mom told to stay away
The mother of a British teenager who was found dead on a beach last year has been advised not to return to the country because of death threats, her lawyer said yesterday. Vikram Varma said he had warned Fiona MacKeown that it was not safe for her to travel to Goa, where her 15-year-old daughter, Scarlett Keeling, was allegedly drugged and raped. “The threat to her life is quite high,” he said. He declined to elaborate. The lawyer said it was “very clear” that Scarlett had been killed by people linked to the drugs underworld and that the threats against her mother were an attempt to stop her from testifying against two men awaiting trial.
■JAPAN
Enzyme may hinder cancer
Scientists have identified an enzyme that appears to suppress breast cancer and they hope the finding will spur new therapies to control the second most common cancer in the world. At issue is the enzyme CHIP, which experts say can stunt cancer growth by degrading cancer-causing proteins. The enzyme occurs naturally in human breast tissue. In an article published in Nature Cell Biology, the scientists said they injected two kinds of human breast cancer cells into mice. One set carried the CHIP enzyme. Tumors in the group of mice with the enzyme were far smaller, Junn Yanagisawa of the University of Tsukuba said.
■INDONESIA
Flooding strikes Java
Seasonal flooding has inundated hundreds of houses, forced the closure of a regional airport and triggered landslides that killed at least two people, officials said yesterday. Dozens of flights to Semarang, Java, were canceled yesterday after the main runway was submerged, provincial spokesman Achyani said. It was unclear how long the airport would remain closed because heavy rainfall caused by Tropical Cyclone Freddy continued to lash the city of 1.3 million. Two people have died in landslides, one near Semarang and a second in western Java.
■SOUTH AFRICA
Zimbabwe may use rand
President Kgalema Motlanthe said on Sunday that Zimbabwe could adopt the South African rand as its standard currency. “We have to help them so that the coalition government works,” Motlanthe said in an interview with the SABC channel, referring to power-sharing between Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and prime minister-designate Morgan Tsvangirai. It “may be practical for them to enter into an arrangment with the reserve bank here and allow the rand to become the common currency,” he said. Anaylsts say inflation in Zimbabwe stands at several billion percent. The Zimbabwean dollar has been repeatedly devalued and restrictions on the use of foreign currencies including the US dollar, the euro and the rand have been lifted by Harare.
■HUNGARY
Handball player murdered
Austrian police arrested two men suspected of stabbing to death Romanian handball player Marian Cozma outside a Hungarian nightclub early on Sunday, police in Budapest said yesterday. “The two suspects fled Hungary and were arrested in Austria by Austrian police and remain in Austrian police custody,” police spokeswoman Piroska Varadi said. “A third suspect is still at large.” The government was expected to seek the suspects’ extradition. Cozma, 26, a Romanian international player who played in Hungary for MKB Veszprem was stabbed in the heart in an attack in which two other players — Croatian goalkeeper Ivan Pesic, 19, and 22-year-old Zarko Sesum of Serbia — were severely wounded. One of Pesic’s kidneys had to be removed and Sesum was being treated for head injuries. Both were in a stable condition.
■RUSSIA
Moscow protesters detained
Police say seven activists have been detained in Moscow after a rally in memory of a human rights lawyer and a journalist who were killed last month. The protesters were rounded up near the place where prominent lawyer Stanislav Markelov and reporter Anastasiya Baburina were gunned down. The police said the activists would be released “after a short explanatory conversation.”
■GAZA STRIP
Israeli tanks kill man
Palestinian officials say Israeli tanks firing on northern Gaza struck a small house yesterday, killing a 22-year-old man. Israeli aircraft also struck two Palestinian militant positions in the Gaza Strip early yesterday in response to rocket fire from the territory a day earlier, the military said. No injuries were reported. The military did not identify the targets. But Palestinian officials said aircraft hit a Hamas security compound in southern Gaza that had already been struck three times during Israel’s recently ended Gaza offensive and a rocket-launching pad in a field in northern Gaza.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Asbestos-laden ship docks
A decommissioned French aircraft carrier containing asbestos arrived from France on Sunday for recycling despite an environmental controversy. The Clemenceau docked near Hartlepool. It was originally set to be dismantled in India, but revelations that it was loaded with asbestos sparked protests by environmental groups there. British environmentalists, however, were unable to stop the French ship from being brought to the country. The recycling company doing the work estimates 200 jobs will be created, but environmentalists say that is not worth the potential risks.
■UNITED STATES
Octuplets’ grandma upset
The mother of the woman who used a fertility doctor to give birth to octuplets, despite already having six young children, called her daughter’s actions “unconscionable” in an interview posted online on Sunday.Angela Suleman is caring for the six older children while her daughter is hospitalized after giving birth on Jan. 26 to the octuplets. The Web site posted photographs from inside Angela Suleman’s disheveled three-bedroom home, where Nadya and her brood also live. Heaps of clothing pour from an open closet door and a carpeted bedroom, where a bedsheet serves as a curtain, is cluttered with cribs.
■ARGENTINA
Holocaust denier ousted
A Roman Catholic bishop whose denials that the Holocaust ever happened led to Vatican demands he recant has been removed as the head of a seminary, local media reported on Sunday, citing a Catholic official. The ultraconservative Society of St. Pius X has dismissed Bishop Richard Williamson as director of its seminary in La Reja, outside Buenos Aires, independent Argentine news agency Diarios y Noticias and the newspaper La Nacion said. Williamson is one of four bishops from the society whose excommunications were lifted last month by Pope Benedict XVI. Williamson has said he does not believe Jews were gassed during the Holocaust.
■MEXICO
Eleven die in drug fight
The bloody drug war claimed 11 more victims on Saturday and Sunday as rival drug gangs clashed in the border town of Ciudad Juarez, police said. Among them, three people were shot exiting a nightclub and four others — including a 14-year-old — were killed in another area of the city. Witnesses told police that the victims had been drug dealers, killed by rival gangs. Another victim, whose remains were charred, could not be identified. At least 220 people have died in the city — which lies across the Rio Grande from the US city El Paso — since the beginning of this year.
■BRAZIL
Five Rio police killed
Five police officers were killed in a bloody weekend of violence in Rio de Janeiro, authorities said on Sunday. In less than 12 hours, three members of the military police were killed, adding to a sense of insecurity that has swept the city. On Sunday, a sergeant died in hospital after being shot three times during an assault in the north of the city. A police statement said two men had approached the officer on motorbike. In the same area on Saturday, another sergeant was shot while on patrol. Also on Saturday, in the Campo Grande neighborhood, an off-duty captain was shot at a barbecue with friends. The gunmen are thought to belong to gangs that control some areas of the city, running protection rackets.
■GUATEMALA
Troops torch drug crops
Soldiers and police burned 700 hectares of fields growing marijuana and poppies used to make heroin in the country’s biggest drug operation, the president’s office said on Sunday. The street value of the marijuana and heroin that could be processed from the destroyed crops was estimated at US$12 billion, twice the size of the country’s national budget, said Fredy Portillo, a spokesman for the president’s office. The weeklong operations deployed around 400 security forces to the mountainous state of San Marcos near the border with Mexico, where powerful Mexican cartels distribute seeds and pay high prices for the illicit harvest.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not