■ PHILIPPINES
Activists rescue tiny shark
Activists have rescued what they believe might be the smallest offspring of the world’s biggest fish — a whale shark the size of a forearm, a conservation group said yesterday. The World Wide Fund (WWF) for Nature said maritime officials and activists in Pilar town rescued the 38cm-long whale shark last week and released it in deep waters. Its tail was tied to a small rope on a beach. The group called it “arguably the smallest living whale shark in recorded history.” The WWF said the discovery was the first ever indication that this coastline may be their birthing ground. The gentle creatures, which can grow to be as big as a bus, make regular stops along the country’s eastern shores from December to May, attracting thousands of tourists. But little is known about where they breed as they cruise the world seas.
PHOTO: AFP
■ MALAYSIA
Illegal meat seized
Authorities have seized the butchered remains of dozens of civet cats, long-tailed monkeys and wild boar destined to be sold to neighboring countries, an official said yesterday. The Department of Wildlife and National Parks said it seized a total of 7,000kg of exotic meat in a raid near the Thai border on Monday. The haul netted 54 civet cats and 10 long-tailed monkeys — both classified as threatened species and protected by law — and 27 wild boar heads, enforcement official Celescoriano Razond told reporters. “They were seized from the house of a 50-year-old man who was found to be in illegal possession of these meats, which were worth between 50,000 and 80,000 ringgit [US$13,450 and US$21,520],” he said.
■ INDONESIA
Australians released
Five Australians jailed for illegally entering Papua Province by plane have been released after winning their appeal, their lawyer said yesterday. They were to fly the plane home as soon as yesterday after the high court ruled that they had received verbal permission to land from the control tower in Papua’s Merauke district on Sept. 12, their lawyer said. A lower court in January jailed them for up to three years. They had flown from Horn island off northeastern Australia on what they described as a sightseeing trip. “They have all been freed since the high court accepted their appeal on March 5,” lawyer Efrem Fangoihoy said. The court had yet to make its ruling public but the lawyer said he was expecting formal notification later yesterday.
■ NEPAL
Peace threatened: envoys
Western diplomats expressed concern over cracks in the peace process that ended the country’s bloody 10-year communist insurgency, the British embassy said in a statement. Officials from the embassies of Britain, France and the US met Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal on Sunday, the statement said. The diplomats said in the letter that there were “negative developments” in the process, including new recruitment campaigns by both the government army and the former rebel Maoists that the envoys said were “clear breaches of the spirit of the peace agreements.” The former rebels are protesting the recruitment of 2,800 new soldiers into the national army last year, saying it was against the peace process.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
France honors WWI survivor
The last British survivor of the trench warfare of World War I’s Western Front has been made an officer of the French Legion of Honor. French Ambassador Maurice Gourdault-Montagne gave 110-year-old veteran Harry Patch the medal on Monday. Patch was already a Knight of the French Legion of Honor. He received that award in 1998 along with more than 300 other World War I veterans. Patch fought as a machine-gunner in the 1917 Battle of Passchendaele, where he was wounded. The ceremony took place at Patch’s nursing home in Wells, west of London.
■ MADAGASCAR
Opposition head in embassy
The UN said on Monday that the country’s opposition leader has taken refuge in the French embassy. Andry Rajoelina, a former mayor of the capital city, is locked in a power struggle with President Marc Ravalomanana but went into hiding last week, saying he feared arrest. A UN envoy, Tiebile Drame, had said earlier that the UN was giving Rajoelina diplomatic protection. But Yves Sorokabi, associate UN spokesman in New York, said Rajoelina was in the French embassy. Rajoelina accuses Ravalomanana of undermining democracy and being responsible for the deaths of at least 25 protesters killed by police.
■ ISRAEL
Militants fire two rockets
Gaza militants fired two rockets into Israel early yesterday without causing injuries, the army said. One of the projectiles damaged a fence at a collective farm and another fell into an open space, a spokesman said. It was the latest violence to shake tenuous ceasefires that Israel and Hamas announced on Jan. 18.
■ POLAND
Tusk caught playing hooky
Prime Minister Donald Tusk has apologized after being caught on tape skipping a parliamentary vote to play soccer. The private television station TVN caught Tusk playing soccer with friends on Thursday night while lawmakers voted on pension plans. Tusk said Monday “there are no special words to justify” skipping the vote for the match. He apologized and said “it shouldn’t happen, and it won’t happen again.”
■ LATVIA
WWII marches banned
Riga has banned all marches linked to the controversial anniversary next week of World War II SS veterans because it fears they might spark a riot like one in January, authorities said on Monday. The January rioting, when citizens angered at the economic crisis attacked parliament and overturned police cars, was the worst in Latvia since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. It was one reason the government collapsed last month. The March 16 SS event has been a flashpoint in the past and was banned in 2006 after violence the year before.
■ UKRAINE
Warsaw warns Lukashenko
Warsaw warned Belarusian President Aleksander Lukashenko on Monday to allow ethnic Poles the right of assembly or face further isolation. “Lukashenko cannot be invited to the European Union summit in Prague, unless he respects the rights of the Polish minority in his country,” said a Polish government letter made public by ethnic Polish activists in Belarus. The Lukashenko regime in recent months has embarked on a campaign against ethnic Poles, with the media almost daily accusing ethnic Polish groups of being funded by Western intelligence services.
■ UNITED STATES
‘Ghengis Khan’ dies in blast
Martha Stewart’s puppy has died in a propane explosion at a Pennsylvania kennel. Stewart said on her blog she’s “deeply saddened” by the death of her chow, Ghengis Khan, in Friday’s blast at the Pazzazz Pet Boarding kennel. Fifteen dogs were killed in the explosion. Two more died over the weekend. The kennel was getting a propane delivery when the tank ignited, setting the pens on fire. The driver was critically burned. A hospital spokeswoman said Timothy Kleinhagen of Summit Hill had been upgraded to stable condition. Officials say a spark or static electricity may have started the blaze.
■ UNITED STATES
Mentally ill man charged
A man with a history of mental illness was charged with murder and battery on Monday in the slaying of an Illinois pastor and the stabbing of two parishioners who tackled him to the floor during Sunday morning services. Terry Sedlacek, 27, was the subject of a profile last year in the St. Louis Post Dispatch about how Lyme disease had attacked his brain. His mother told the paper at the time that Sedlacek became ill when he was in high school after being bitten by an infected tick. Police said they are not sure why Sedlacek walked into First Baptist Church on Sunday morning and shot head pastor Fred Winters, whose bible deflected one bullet and exploded in what shocked parishioners described as “confetti.”
■ IRAQ
Iran, Iraq dispute border
Iraq and Iran are seriously at odds on defining their land and sea borders, Baghdad’s foreign minister said in comments on Monday that showed the neighbors, despite improved ties, have not resolved old tensions. “We have very big problems with the Iranian side with setting and drawing the land, sea and coastal borders,” the minister, Hoshiyar Zebari, told Iraqi television station al-Sharqiya. “We also have problems with the Shatt al-Arab channel,” he said. A dispute over the two countries’ border and over control of the strategic Shatt al-Arab waterway, known in Iran as Arvand Rud, helped trigger the Iran-Iraq war, which killed an estimated 1 million people from 1980 to 1988. Shatt al-Arab, which joins the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and empties into the Gulf below Iraq’s port city of Basra, is Iraq’s only shipping outlet.
■ VENEZUELA
Chavez closes cadaver show
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has closed an exhibition of dissected cadavers in Caracas and confiscated the contents because, he said, it reflects “moral decomposition.” The traveling show, Bodies Revealed, has stirred controversy in other countries for displaying 14 full-body human specimens and more than 200 organs. “We are in the midst of something macabre,” Chavez said on his weekly TV show on Sunday. “They are human bodies. Human bodies! This is a really clear sign of the huge moral decomposition that is hitting our planet.” Shocked by a newspaper report about the show’s arrival in Venezuela’s capital, the president last week ordered action. The tax agency Seniat and Venezuela’s version of the FBI swooped on its opening day, evicted 400 visitors and carted away exhibits. The authorities will investigate if the displays were illegally declared in customs as made of plastic. Bodies Revealed uses a technique known as polymer preservation, involving embalming, dissection, dehydration and injections of liquid silicone. Debates over the origin of the bodies, which are Chinese, and whether donors gave permission, have fueled controversy elsewhere.
‘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
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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in