■VIETNAM
Russians die in bus crash
A bus carrying 24 Russian tourists plunged into a ravine in southern Vietnam, killing at least 12, local media reported yesterday. The accident occurred on Friday evening as the bus with the Russians and three Vietnamese aboard was descending the Dai Ninh pass on its way from the hill resort of Dalat to the coastal town of Mui Ne, the news Web site Vietnamnet reported. Rescuers were still trying to free at least nine passengers from the bus yesterday morning. Eight of the casualties died at the scene 150km south of Dalat, while another four died after being admitted to a nearby hospital.
■NEPAL
Police kill two protesters
Police opened fire yesterday on a group of ethnic protesters demanding greater rights who attacked a police patrol, killing at least two of them in the restive southwest. Government administrator Rishiram Dhakal said eight policemen were injured in the attack just after midnight. The police were patrolling the streets of Dang, a town about 320km southeast of Kathmandu, when the protesters confronted them. Dhakal said the officers opened fire after several officers were injured in the ensuing melee. Two protesters were killed.
■THAILAND
Boy wounded in drive-by
Suspected Muslim militants critically wounded a nine-year-old boy in a drive-by shooting yesterrday, a day after three soldiers were shot dead. A Muslim man believed to be a police informant was also shot and wounded yesterday in Pattani Province, a military spokesman said. The nine-year-old Muslim boy was severely wounded by gunfire as he sat in a pickup truck waiting for his uncle, who is a policeman in Yala Province.
■AUSTRALIA
Oil clean-up to take weeks
Oil from a damaged ship that soiled 60km of beaches on the east coast will take weeks to remove, officials said yesterday. There were also fears that 400 tonnes of ammonium nitrate lost overboard from the Hong Kong-registered Pacific Adventurer could create massive algal blooms in the ocean as the 31 lost containers leak over time. Planes have been searching in vain for the lost containers from the air. Ammonium nitrate is used to manufacture fertilizer. Oil sprang from the 180m vessel when containers tipped overboard in a storm holed the hull and pierced a fuel tank. Owner Swire Shipping Ltd said when the accident happened on Wednesday that 42 tonnes of marine diesel had leaked from the ship, which is now tied up in Brisbane harbor, but estimates of the actual amount go much higher. Paul Lucas, deputy premier of Queensland state, said the scale of the environmental disaster could be 10 times the initial assessment.
■CHINA
Police chief jailed over fire
A police chief has been sentenced to 13 years in jail for his role in a fire at a nightclub that killed 44 people, state media reported yesterday. Yang Zhouwu, former police chief for a district of Shenzhen, was found guilty of taking 300,000 yuan (US$44,000) in bribes from the nightclub’s managers and neglecting his duties, broadcaster CCTV said. Five other people, including a former fire service chief, a police officer and several civil servants also received jail sentences of up to six years, CCTV reported. The court in Shenzhen said they all bore some responsibility for the unsafe conditions at the Dance King nightclub.
■BANGLADESH
Mall fire stirs safety issues
Hundreds of security forces cordoned off the country’s largest shopping mall yesterday after a fire engulfed its top floors, killing at least seven people and raising new questions about safety in the accident-prone nation. Dozens of people were injured in the blaze that started on a top floor of the 21-story building and soon spread to the others whipped by the wind on Friday. The blaze could not be controlled quickly because of a lack of required safety tools available to the government’s fire services department, officials said. They also said the building’s own fire-fighting system either did not work or failed to switch on automatically. The Fire Service and Civil Defense department’s only aerial ladder could not reach beyond the 13th floor, said Shahidul Islam, who led the rescue operations at the Bashundhara City Complex. Adequate water was also unavailable at the spot. It took 10 hours to put out the blaze, which started early afternoon on Friday.
■SINGAPORE
‘Journal’ editor in contempt
Authorities are charging a senior editor of the Wall Street Journal with contempt of court for three articles last year about the city-state’s judiciary, the Straits Times reported yesterday. High Court Justice Tay Yong Kwang approved an application by the attorney general’s office to start proceedings against Melanie Kirkpatrick, deputy editor of the Journal’s editorial page, the newspaper said, citing court documents. The attorney general claims the articles, which appeared in the editorials and opinion section of the Journal’s Asia edition, “contained passages that scandalize the Singapore judiciary,” the paper said. The Journal is published by Dow Jones & Co, which is owned by News Corp.
■SWEDEN
German appeals verdict
A German woman convicted of killing two toddlers and seriously injuring their mother has appealed her verdict to the highest court, news agency TT reported. An appeals court last month upheld 32-year-old Christine Schurrer’s life sentence for bludgeoning the toddlers to death and attacking their mother with a hammer-like object at their home in Arboga last March. TT quoted her lawyer, Per-Ingvar Ekblad, as saying on Friday that they were appealing the verdict to the Supreme Court, citing a lack of evidence. Prosecutors said Schurrer’s attack was motivated by jealousy after her former boyfriend ended their relationship and started a new one with the children’s mother.
■SUDAN
Hostages may be free soon
Three foreign aid workers taken hostage in the war-torn Darfur region “have not been freed yet” but will be “very soon,” a senior Sudanese official said yesterday. “They have not been released yet. They will be very soon. They are in good shape,” the official said on condition of anonymity. An Italian doctor, Canadian nurse and French administrator with Doctors Without Borders were kidnapped at gunpoint on Wednesday in Saraf Umra. A spokeswoman for the organization said on Friday they had received assurances from authorities that the aid workers had been released.
■SERBIA
Five suspected of war crimes
Five former members of special police units are being investigated for allegedly committing atrocities in Kosovo, the war crimes prosecutor’s office said on Friday. The five are suspected of committing war crimes against civilians and prisoners of war during the 1998 to 1999 conflict, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement. Police did not confirm a report by independent B92 Television saying four suspects had been arrested. None of the suspects has been identified by name.
■NIGERIA
Law would ban gay marriage
Human rights groups and gay activists were outraged by a bid to criminalize gay marriage. Homosexuality is illegal in Nigeria and carries the death penalty in the 12 northern states that impose Shariah law. But lawmakers are considering a bid to expressly outlaw marriage between same sex couples. Queer Alliance, a group of homosexual, bisexual and transgender Nigerians, urged legislators to scrap the bill, which prescribes a three-year jail sentence for entering into a same-sex marriage. “We ask that the lawmakers work with us to understand the concept of sexuality and sexual orientation through our experiences and not create laws that will punish us needlessly,” the alliance told lawmakers at a public hearing on Wednesday.
■RUSSIA
Gunman dies in stand-off
Security forces on Friday shot dead a gunman who took seven people hostage in a bank in a small Siberian town, officials said. The masked attacker, who had still to be identified, took hostage two men and three women, regional authorities said. Another two people hid on an upper floor of the building. The hostages were thought to be employees of the URSA bank branch in Leninsk-Kuznetsky. After an hours-long stand-off in which special forces sealed off the building, Aman Tuleyev, governor of the Kemerovo region, said on TV that the gunman had been shot dead. The hostages survived the incident. Earlier, Tuleyev said the gunman demanded a plane and money.
■MEXICO
Cash seized at airport
Police at Mexico City’s airport detained a Filipino on Thursday who was carrying a large amount of undeclared cash — US$44,600. The Philippine citizen, Saponmg Marcelo Junior Cabang, was detained as he was boarding a flight to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, officials said. The money was found distributed at various places, including his jacket and a luggage compartment.
■UNITED STATES
Stolen bulldozer found
A golf course in Texas had a heavy duty hazard: A bulldozer reported stolen a decade ago has been found buried under a fairway. The Dallas Morning News reported on Thursday that investigators located the bulldozer at Canyon West Golf Course in Weatherford. Detective Tyler Farrell with the Tarrant Regional Auto Crimes Task Force says a former golf course worker contacted authorities after noticing part of the bulldozer while fertilizing the course. Farrell says a tractor also used to build the golf course was reported stolen after work began in 1996 and has not been recovered. Weatherford is 48km west of Fort Worth.
■UNITED STATES
Postcard arrives — years late
A woman’s postcard bearing greetings from Montana has finally arrived in northeastern Ohio — 47 years later. Insurance agent Dave Conn opened his post office box in the community of Hudson last week and found the mailing sent from Helena, Montana, in 1962. It was sent to Marion White, the previous renter of the box, who had died in 1988. The writer signed the postcard “Fran” and mentioned having “had a marvelous time in Montana.” After asking around, Conn said he determined the card must have come from White’s well-traveled friend Frances Murphey, a longtime reporter at the Akron Beacon Journal. She died in 1998 at age 75.
■CANADA
Search efforts called off
Search and rescue crews ended their search on Friday night for 16 missing people, a day after a helicopter with 18 people on board plunged into the sea while en route to offshore oil facilities. Rescue official Major Paul Doucette said crews quit an active search nearly 34 hours after the helicopter went down about 48km off the coast of Newfoundland. One survivor and the body of another person were found after the Sikorsky S-92 issued a distress call and ditched into the sea. Major Denis McGuire of the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre said police and Transport Canada were taking over what has been classified as a recovery mission. “We’ve gone beyond that 24-hour life expectancy time for someone in an immersion suit,” McGuire said in announcing the end of the search.
■PERU
Fujimori’s mother dies
The daughter of jailed former president Alberto Fujimori said his mother has died in Japan. Keiko Fujimori says her grandmother Matsue died after weeks in a coma caused by complications from two strokes she suffered in 2000. She said on Friday that Alberto Fujimori has been informed of her death and is in mourning. The family has already held a funeral in Japan. The 70-year-old Fujimori is on trial and faces up to 30 years on charges of murder and kidnapping for allegedly authorizing a military death squad responsible for two massacres and several kidnappings in the early 1990s. Fujimori denies he had knowledge of the death squad’s existence and says he never approved a dirty war against leftist rebels.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of