■JAPAN
Robbers hit jewelry store
Thieves bored a hole in the concrete wall of a jewelry shop on Tokyo’s fashionable Ginza street and made off with watches worth about ¥300 million (US$3.2 million), police said yesterday. About 200 luxury watches were stolen from glass showcases in the Tenshodo store in the bustling shopping district, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Department said after the theft was discovered on Saturday. “The hole was bored into a concrete wall located in a narrow strip of land between Tenshodo and an adjacent building,” he said.
■INDIA
Militants escape custody
Security agencies launched a manhunt yesterday for three Pakistani militants who escaped police custody just before they were to be deported, police said. New Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said the three fled on Friday from a hospital in the capital where they were taken for a routine check-up ahead of their expulsion to Pakistan. The men had been convicted for two bomb blasts at Delhi’s 16th-century Red Fort in June 2000 which claimed two lives. They completed their nine-year jail sentences in October and had been moved from a state prison to a security facility awaiting deportation.
■AUSTRALIA
Racial link ‘presumptuous’
Police yesterday played down suggestions the fatal stabbing of an Indian student in Melbourne was racially motivated. The 21-year-old was apparently attacked as he walked through parkland west of the city on Saturday night. Senior sergeant David Snare said there was no indication the man, who had been studying accounting, was targeted because of his race. “I think to jump to any conclusion like that is presumptuous and may well interfere with the investigations,” Snare told reporters. Anger over a string of violent attacks against Indian students spilled over into street protests in Sydney and Melbourne in June, sparking a wave of negative publicity.
■AUSTRALIA
Hundreds flee floods
Emergency services evacuated hundreds of people from an outback town yesterday after days of flooding in the country’s east, officials said. Days of heavy rains in New South Wales state over New Year has swollen rivers and left hundreds of farms cut off by floodwaters. Two areas of the state have been declared natural disaster areas. The damage bill is expected to run into millions of dollars. Officials were unable to estimate the area currently under water, saying reports were still coming in. Despite the damage, many farmers have welcomed the rains as respite from a long-running drought. Disaster relief officials yesterday evacuated more than 400 people in the New South Wales town of Coonamble.
■AUSTRALIA
PM pens children’s book
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has taken time out of his busy schedule to indulge his imagination by penning a children’s book featuring his family pets, a spokeswoman said yesterday. Rudd — who is so famed for his jet setting work ethic he has been nicknamed “Kevin 707” by local media — wrote the book with children’s TV star Rhys Muldoon, his spokeswoman said. Titled Jasper and Abby and the Great Australia Day Kerfuffle, the book follows Rudd’s pet cat and dog on an adventure through the grounds of The Lodge, his family’s official residence in Canberra. “It’s delightful, it’s actually very, very cute, even cuter than one might imagine,” the spokeswoman said.
■IRAN
Police killed by traffickers
Drug traffickers have killed 11 policemen in eastern Iran, local police were quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency on Saturday. The confrontation occurred on Friday in a desert area, which lies on a major narcotics route from neighboring Afghanistan and Pakistan. “In clashes between police and a narcotics convoy headed from south to north, seven policemen were killed and four others were injured who died later of their severe injuries,” Colonel Kazem Hashemabadi said. UN estimates show that about 40 percent of the 7,700 tonnes of narcotics produced in Afghanistan in 2008 entered Iran, which also faces serious drug abuse among its mostly youthful population of 70 million.
■FRANCE
Works of art stolen
About 30 works of art, including paintings by Pablo Picasso and Henri Rousseau, have been stolen from the home of a private collector in southern France, police said on Saturday. The theft was carried out while the owners were on vacation abroad, said a police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of department policy. The break-in was discovered by a caretaker at the home in La Cadiere-d’Azur, a medieval Provencal village surrounded by vineyards and olive trees. The value of the stolen art is still unclear, as the owners, returning home this weekend, are preparing to take an inventory, the official said.
■SPAIN
Fewer arrivals in Canaries
The number of illegal immigrants risking their lives in rickety boats to reach Spain’s Canary Islands from northwest Africa has descended to levels last seen a decade ago, officials said on Saturday. Last year, a total of 2,041 adults and 201 children arrived in the islands or were rescued as they sailed toward them, an Interior Ministry spokeswoman said. Levels this low were last recorded a decade ago, when 2,165 people made landfall on the archipelago, 1,380km off Spain’s southwestern tip. The number of immigrants began to shoot up in 2002, when 9,929 arrived, and peaked in 2006 when 31,859 had to be housed, the spokeswoman said on condition of anonymity in keeping with government rules.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Drink hitting NHS resources
A report is warning that Britain’s drinking culture is costing the country’s publicly funded National Health Service (NHS) £2.7 billion (US$4.4 billion) a year. The report says the cost of treating drink-related problems has doubled in the past five years and that around 10.5 million adults in Britain drink above sensible limits — putting an unacceptable strain on medical staff and health services. The Department of Health said in a statement on Saturday that levels of alcohol-related hospital admissions are unacceptably high and it will help healthcare providers cope with the problem.
■IRAQ
Polls won’t delay pullout
The top US general in Iraq says the country’s delay in holding elections will not keep US combat forces from leaving as scheduled by the end of August. General Ray Odierno said on Saturday in an interview that he expects the US to have about 100,000 troops in the country during the March 7 elections. About 60 days after the vote, he will assess whether the country is on a stable footing and then begin moving troops out.
■CUBA
‘Babalawo’ urge dialogue
The high priests of the Afro-American Santeria religion announced their visions for this year on Saturday, predicting big social changes and internal conflicts that should be handled with “sincere dialogue” and mutual respect. “We can reach all we aspire to, but we can also destroy it all. The possibilities in 2010 are greater than last year’s. It all rests in our hands,” babalawo (priest) Lazaro Cuesta said on presenting his group’s “The Letter of the Year” report. Put together by some 1,000 babalawo, the annual predictions include “coups d’etat,” “sudden changes in political systems,” “betrayal and usurpation” among top government officials, as well as falling farm and livestock production, and the “breakup of agreements ... wars and military interventions.”
■COLOMBIA
Galeras volcano erupts
The Galeras volcano in southern Colombia erupted on Saturday, shooting rock and ash and prompting authorities to order the evacuation of about 8,000 people. No one was killed or injured in the eruption. But officials warned that the volcano could remain volatile. Galeras, located in the Andes mountains near the border with Ecuador, erupted 10 times last year.
■UNITED STATES
FAA monitors airline
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is increasing oversight of American Airlines after three mishaps during landings last month. Jetliners’ wingtips touched the ground during two landings, one in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Dec. 13, the other in Austin, Texas, on Dec. 24. And in Jamaica, a plane overshot the runway during heavy rain on Dec. 22. FAA officials said in a statement on Friday they will conduct a review of the mishaps to see if there might be a larger issue. A spokesman for American told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on Friday that the company was cooperating with the FAA and conducting its own investigation.
■COLOMBIA
FARC rebels killed in attack
Aerial bombing on New Year’s Day of two leftist guerrilla camps in the southern Meta region left 22 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels dead, including three unit leaders, military sources said on Saturday. The attack on the rebel camps by air force planes and special operations forces on the ground also captured eight rebels, five of whom were wounded, General Javier Florez told reporters. Defense Minister Gabriel Silva said on Friday that the raid was part of a response to the kidnapping and assassination of governor Luis Francisco Cuellar 10 days ago. Florez said the attacks were the culmination of four months of intelligence work and that in addition to raiding FARC camps in Meta, “similar ones are being carried out in Caqueta and Guaviare departments.”
■CANADA
Police monitor funeral
There was a heavy police presence in Montreal’s Little Italy neighborhood on Saturday for the funeral service for Nick Rizzuto, the son of Montreal Mafia boss Vito Rizzut, the reputed head of the nation’s most powerful Mafia family. Nick was standing next to a black Mercedes last Monday when a gunman approached and fired several shots in broad daylight, killing him. Witnesses said the victim crumpled into the fresh snow. Police have not yet arrested the gunman. Most of the mourners at Notre-Dame-de-la-Defense church remained tightlipped as they filed out of the church, refusing to speak to reporters assembled outside.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing