■INDIA
Six killed in Assam blasts
At least six people were killed and 40 wounded in two bomb blasts in northeast Assam State yesterday, police said. Bombs hidden in bicycles exploded in front of a police station and a shopping complex in Nalbari, about 70km west of state capital Dispur, Jitmol Doley, a senior police officer, said by telephone. Police said the separatist United Liberation Front of Asom was behind the blasts, but a senior rebel leader telephoned local newspaper offices and television stations to deny its involvement. The blasts came soon after New Delhi announced the government would provide safe passage to top rebel leaders willing to talk and find a lasting solution to the decades old insurgency in the state. Security forces have placed the entire tea and oil-rich Assam State on high alert.
■INDONESIA
Ferry sinks off Sumatra
Rescuers saved more than 230 people aboard a passenger ferry that sank yesterday in rough waters off Sumatra island, but at least nine people died, an official said. An unknown number of passengers were still missing. A second ferry was still stranded in nearby waters after running aground, but all its passengers were said to be safe. Rescue teams found nine bodies, including those of two children, and rescued 232 survivors from the Dumai Express 10, said Nurdin Basirun, a local government official. High waves were making the search and rescue operation difficult, said Brigadier General Puji Hartanto, police chief of Riau Kepulauan Province. At least nine ships and several fishing boats were searching for an unknown number of missing passengers. Officials said the ferry manifest listed 228 people, including 15 children, and 14 crew members, but it was not known if those numbers were accurate.
■PHILIPPINES
Pirates abduct tugboat crew
Unidentified gunmen abducted the captain and two crewmen of a tugboat, the coast guard said yesterday. The gunmen were aboard three pump boats when they approached the MT Marinero off Siocon town in Zamboanga del Norte province late on Saturday. Commodore Rodolfo Isonera, a regional coast guard commander, said the suspects then forcibly boarded the Marinero. Isonera said the gunmen also took the crew’s personal belongings, including radio and mobile phones, as well as food supplies. Police said the tugboat’s other crew members reported the incident to authorities.
■SOUTH KOREA
Murderer is own last victim
A man on death row for murdering 13 people in one of the country’s worst killing sprees has died after hanging himself. The Justice Ministry says Jeong Nam-kyu died in a hospital yesterday, a day after hanging himself with plastic trash bags in his cell. The ministry says in a statement Jeong, 40, is believed to have died of a heart attack or brain damage caused by his suicide attempt. A court sentenced Jeong to death in 2007 for killing 13 people and wounding 20 others. He also robbed and sexually assaulted many of his victims.
■CHINA
Mine death toll rises
The death toll from the country’s latest coal mine disaster reached 87 as hopes dimmed yesterday that more survivors would be found a day after a gas blast at a colliery in the country’s icy far northeast. Xinhua news agency reported 528 workers were in the mine, at Hegang in Heilongjiang Province, at the time of the blast, and 420 had been rescued by yesterday. Some 21 miners remained trapped or unaccounted for, Zhang Jinguang (張金光), a spokesman for the mine company, told reporters, who were taken by officials to see 20 or so rescue workers descending down a tunnel still belching smoke. Zhang Fucheng (張福成), an official in charge of rescue efforts, told Chinese television that efforts were being impeded by dense gas and collapsed tunnels. Temperatures were near freezing.
■JAPAN
Bar fire kills four
A fire broke out in a bar in downtown Tokyo yesterday, killing four people and injuring 16 others, both customers and staff, a fire department official said. “Firefighters rescued four men and brought them to a hospital but they were confirmed as dead,” an official at the Tokyo Fire Department told reporters, adding that three 13 men and three women were also injured. The blaze occurred in the bar on the second floor of a five-storey building in a narrow street of Tokyo and television footage showed black smoke pouring out of the windows. Police and the fire department are investigating the cause of the fire. Witnesses told officials it appeared to have started in the kitchen.
■NORTHERN MARIANAS
Police identify shooter
Saipan officials have identified the gunman involved in a deadly rampage as 42-year-old Li Zhongren (李忠仁) of China. Police on Sunday said Li is believed to be the caretaker of the shooting range where he gunned down four people on Friday, including two young children. He also wounded five South Korean visitors and a local girl at a popular tourist site before taking his own life. Public Safety spokesman Jason Tarkong said the motive “may be related to issues about money and the suspect’s emotional frustration.” Tarkong says 750 rounds of ammunition were found in Li’s van.
■IRAN
Former VP sentenced to jail
A reformist former vice president who was arrested after the disputed election in June has been sentenced to six years in jail, a newspaper reported yesterday. Mohammad Ali Abtahi, one of dozens of leading moderates detained after the poll and accused of fomenting widespread street protests and unrest, was officially informed about his sentence on Saturday, the Jahan-e Eqtesad newspaper said. Abtahi, who was vice president during the 1997 to 2005 presidency of Mohammad Khatami, is the most senior reformer sentenced to jail so far in connection with the presidential vote, which sparked months of political turmoil. The moderate opposition says the poll was rigged to secure the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
■ISRAEL
Military attacks Gaza
The military said its aircraft attacked two weapons-making factories and a smuggling tunnel in the Gaza Strip. The military says the air strikes yesterday were in retaliation for rocket fire into southern portions of the country from Gaza a day earlier. Later on Saturday, Gaza’s Hamas rulers announced that militant factions in the territory had agreed to stop firing rockets. The goal is to prevent retaliation. The military went to war against Gaza militants nearly a year ago to crush rocket squads who had severely disrupted life in the south for years. The number of attacks has decreased dramatically. But the military said weapons continued to reach militants through tunnels under Gaza’s border with Egypt.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Police come under fire
Police in Northern Ireland came under attack on Saturday in a small village near the border with Ireland, the BBC reported, in an incident that will spark concerns of renewed violence in the province. Police in County Fermanagh were not immediately available for comment on the report, which said shots were fired at officers in the village of Garrison. They returned fire, but there were no reports of any injuries, the BBC said. In a separate incident in Belfast, police said a vehicle was driven through the barriers at a complex where the Northern Ireland Policing Board is based and burst into flames after being abandoned near the board’s offices. “The cause is still being established. The only damage caused was to the car itself, no one was injured,” a spokeswoman for Belfast police said, adding that army bomb disposal officers were investigating. Two men were spotted leaving the scene at Clarendon Dock in a red car. The province has been largely peaceful since 1998 peace accords between the Protestant and Catholic communities.
■ITALY
Il Duce’s brains not on sale
Dictator Benito Mussolini’s blood and brain went on sale on Friday for 15,000 euros (US$22,000) on online auction Web site eBay, before the company pulled the ad posted by an anonymous seller. “No bid was made during the brief time the advert was visible,” eBay said on its Web site, explaining the removal on the grounds that the company did not authorize sales of human matter. “It’s a disgrace trying to sell my grandfather’s brain and blood,” said Alessandra Mussolini, the neo-fascist granddaughter of Il Duce told Sky TG24 TV. She said that the remains of her grandfather, who was hanged by partisans at the end of World War II, were normally kept in a Milan hospital. The TV station said the hospital denied the claim.
■UNITED STATES
Military nurse acquitted
A military trial has acquitted a former military nurse of murder after he was accused of giving lethal doses of painkillers to hasten the deaths of three terminally ill patients at the Air Force’s largest hospital. Captain Michael Fontana, wearing his Air Force uniform, showed no emotion on Saturday as a military judge cleared him of three counts of murder, then collapsed into the arms of weeping family members inside a Lackland, California, Air Force base courtroom. Military prosecutors had painted Fontana as a rogue and arrogant nurse who pumped patients full of fentanyl and morphine when they were not “dying quick enough.”
■UNITED STATES
Seat dispute turns deadly
A subway passenger was stabbed to death in front of horrified riders in a dispute with another man over a seat in the car in midtown Manhattan, police said. The victim, who has not been identified, was pronounced dead at the Seventh Avenue station at West 53rd Street, where the train stopped after the attack at about 2am on Saturday. The victim, who was in his mid-30s, was repeatedly stabbed in the neck and face with a knife, police said. He had boarded the train at the Rockefeller Center station, police said. Gerardo Sanchez, 37, was charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon in the slaying on the northbound “D” train, police said.
■UNITED STATES
Johnston gets three years
The mother of the man former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol had planned to marry has been sentenced to three years in prison. Sherry Johnston was sentenced on Friday in Palmer, northeast of Anchorage, Alaska. She pleaded guilty in August to one count of possession with intent to deliver the painkiller OxyContin. Five other felony counts were dropped in the deal, which called for a five-year prison sentence with two years suspended. The 43-year-old Johnston is the mother of Levi Johnston.
■COLOMBIA
Counterfeit money seized
Authorities confiscated counterfeit US bank notes totaling more than US$2 million in two operations in the city of Medellin, the Judicial Police said. Agents seized more than 1 million counterfeit dollars sent to a Medellin courier business from the town of Quinchia, in Risaralda province, the police statement said on Saturday. “During the operation, 24 packages were confiscated containing 10,320 notes of US$100 denomination, equivalent to US$1,032,000,” it said.
■CANADA
Woman loses benefits
A woman on long-term sick leave for depression said she lost her benefits because her insurance agent found photos of her on Facebook in which she appeared to be having fun. Nathalie Blanchard has been on leave from her job at IBM in Bromont, Quebec, for the last year. The Canadian Broadcasting Corp reported on Saturday she was diagnosed with major depression and was receiving monthly sick-leave benefits from insurance giant Manulife. But the payments dried up this fall and when Blanchard called Manulife, she said she was told she was available to work because of Facebook. She said her insurance agent described several pictures Blanchard posted on Facebook, including ones showing her having a good time at a Chippendales bar show, at her birthday party and on a sun holiday.
‘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