■PHILIPPINES
Exile returns home
The government yesterday welcomed the return of exiled communist rebel negotiator Luis Jalandoni ahead of a resumption of peace talks that both sides hope will end a 40-year insurgency. Jalandoni and wife Consuelo Ledesma, both members of the National Democratic Front, took advantage of the government’s promise of immunity and returned to Manila on Sunday to visit Jalandoni’s ailing sister, said their colleague, Representative Satur Ocampo. The couple lives in self-imposed exile in the Netherlands together with Jose Maria Sison, considered the top figure in the communist movement that includes the 5,000-strong New People’s Army.
■CHINA
Abusive officials risk jobs
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials who abuse their power or handle a protest poorly could lose their jobs, Xinhua news agency said yesterday. New regulations on accountablity issued over the weekend hold officials responsible if misconduct leads to serious accidents, group protests or other serious incidents, Xinhua said. Penalties range from a public apology to suspension, forced resignation and dismissal. The CCP punished 2,386 officials at or above the prefectural level from July 2003 until last December, Xinhua said.
■KAZAKHSTAN
Internet controls tightened
President Nursultan Nazarbayev has signed into law new controls on the Internet that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said yesterday will be repressive. The OSCE, which Kazakhstan will chair next year, had earlier urged Nazarbayev to veto the bill. The legislation will allow courts to block Web sites, including foreign ones, and to class blogs and chatrooms as media. “Nazarbayev signed it last Friday,” Sofya Lapina, a media rights activist, said yesterday. “We had hoped he would veto it and wrote letters to him but that has not been taken into account.” The government says the law was aimed at preventing unrest.
■INDIA
Chhattisgarh put on alert
The central state of Chhattisgarh was on high alert yesterday after the death toll of policemen killed in the worst Maoist attack this year rose to 29 overnight, officials and news reports said. Rebels belonging to the banned Communist Paty of India-Maoist’s military wing carried out three attacks in Rajnandgaon district, 90kmwest of state capital Raipur, on Sunday. District police chief VK Choubey was among those killed. “The death toll has risen by five more to 29 as bodies of four policemen were found in the area where Maoists carried the attacks. Another policeman succumbed to injuries later at night,” a policewoman said. Thirteen policemen were missing in the wake of the attacks.
■HONG KONG
Man immolates himself
A man poured paint thinner over himself and burned himself to death in front of his wife and diners at a seafood restaurant on Sunday night, police said yesterday. The 54-year-old man apparently went to the restaurant to confront his wife who works there over a domestic issue. He pulled out a bottle of paint thinner from a backpack, doused himself with it and then pulled out a lighter and set fire to himself. Ng was declared dead at the scene while his 48-year-old wife and another female restaurant employee were badly injured in the blaze and taken to hospital, police said.
■Chechnya
Police kill five in clashes
Russian security forces shot dead five militants in Chechnya yesterday, Russian news agency Interfax reported, adding to the 17 who died in weekend violence. The separatists were killed in two separate incidents, three when they failed to heed an order to halt their car on a road running through Chechnya early on Monday, a local interior ministry official was quoted as saying. Two were shot when they resisted police trying to detain them near the village of Goi-Chu, the official told Interfax.
■YEMEN
Six sentenced to death
A court yesterday sentenced six men to death for attacks that killed nine Spanish and Belgian tourists over the past two years. Ten others were sentenced to jail terms ranging from eight to 15 years. The defendants shouted religious chants of defiance and prayed as each sentence was announced. The men, 11 Yemenis, four Syrians and a Saudi of Yemeni origin, were found guilty of attacks, including one that killed seven Spanish tourists at the Queen of Sheba temple in Marib in 2007 and two Belgian tourists in the Hadramaut region last year.
■FRANCE
French Jews demand retrial
French Jewish groups on Sunday demanded a retrial for members of a Paris gang called the “Barbarians” who tortured a Jewish youth to death, charging that key murder accomplices were let off too lightly. A Paris court on Friday sentenced gang leader Youssouf Fofana to life in prison with a mandatory 22 years for the anti-Semitic kidnapping and murder of 23-year-old Ilan Halimi, which shocked the nation for its brutality in 2006. But the lower sentences handed to 26 accomplices, including nine years for the young woman who lured Halimi into the gang’s trap, and 15 and 18 years for two men cast as his “jailers,” drew an angry response from Jewish groups. France’s National Bureau of Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism (BNVCA) demanded a retrial, calling for a demonstration yesterday evening outside the offices of Justice Minister Michele Alliot-Marie.
■SOUTH AFRICA
Artworks ‘fakes’: Mandela
Former president Nelson Mandela has launched a last-ditch attempt to prevent a London gallery using his name on an exhibition of prison sketches that he claims are forgeries. Mandela said he “strongly disassociates himself” from the show, Nelson Mandela at 91, due to open yesterday at the Belgravia Gallery. Lawyers for Mandela said they had written to the gallery asking it to “desist immediately” but received no reply. Bally Chuene, Mandela’s legal representative, said: “He did not sign those artworks.” The Belgravia Gallery was unavailable for comment on Sunday, but has previously said it carried out exhaustive research to prove its collection was genuine.
■FRANCE
Airline blacklist ready soon
A global blacklist for unsafe airlines will be set up soon, Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau said yesterday. On Thursday the head of the International Civil Aviation Oganization (ICAO) had rejected the EU’s proposal for such a list, saying that discouraging passengers from using particular aircraft or airline would not necessarily reduce accidents. But Bussereau said he thought one would be created. “France’s impression, Europe’s impression, the work we’re doing with the ICAO, I think that we will quickly end up with a global blacklist,” he said on LCI television.
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
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
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
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number