■PAKISTAN
Zardari sacrifices goats
President Asif Ali Zardari has a black goat slaughtered at his house almost every day to ward off “evil eyes” and protect him from “black magic,” the Dawn newspaper reported yesterday. A spokesman for the president said the goats were slaughtered as an act of sadaqah — meaning “voluntary charity” in Islam — whereby one gives out money or the meat of a slaughtered animal to the poor to win Allah’s blessing and stave off misfortune. “It has been an old practice of Mr Zardari to offer sadaqah,” the spokesman, Farhatullah Babar, told the paper. Hundreds of goats had been sacrificed at Zardari’s house since he was sworn in in September 2008, the Dawn said.
■INDIA
‘Undertrials’ to be freed
Federal Law Minister Veerappa Moily said on Monday that at least 175,000 of more than 250,000 remand prisoners, known as “undertrials,” would be freed in response to human rights campaigns for people lost in the judicial system. Some of these prisoners awaiting trial have already spent more time behind bars than they would have if convicted. “We want to dispose of as many as two-thirds of the undertrial cases by July 31,” Moily told reporters. The National Crime Records Bureau said last year a quarter of a million people facing trial — or 70 percent of the prison population — were being held in 1,276 state-run jails across the country.
■PHILIPPINES
Priests to confess sins
Thousands of Roman Catholic priests were set to make mass confessions of their sins to each other yesterday. The Catholic Bishops Conference said on its Web site that the rare event was to be held behind closed doors in Manila. About 5,500 priests were set to take part in the mass confession at a convention center where the annual congress was being held. Monsignor Pedro Quitorio, spokesman for the bishops, said that while priests lining up before a confessional box was not a common sight, they were also humans and not without sin. “It’s the same process. There’s also penance and absolution,” he said.
■NEW ZEALAND
Lizard smuggler sentenced
A German man who stuffed 44 small lizards into his underwear before trying to board a flight has been sentenced to prison in New Zealand for plundering the country’s protected species. Hans Kurt Kubus, 58, will spend 14 weeks behind bars and must pay a NZ$5,000 (US$3,540) fine before being deported to Germany as soon as he is released, District Court Judge Colin Doherty ruled on Tuesday. Kubus was caught by officials at Christchurch International Airport on South Island last month.
■SWITZERLAND
Push for Arabic at WTO
Arab members of the WTO are pushing for Arabic to be made a fourth official language of the global trade body, diplomats and officials said on Tuesday, but the heavy cost of translation, interpreting and extra printing involved in adding Arabic to the three current official languages — English, French and Spanish — means the proposal is running up against resistance. Any move to add Arabic as an official language would probably prompt a request for Chinese, and maybe even Russian — aligning WTO language policy with the UN.
■SWITZERLAND
Top cop found dead
The police commander heading security at the World Economic Forum was found dead on Tuesday, local authorities said, adding that his death appeared to be suicide. Markus Reinhardt, head of police in the Swiss canton of Graubuenden, was found dead in his hotel in Davos, police said in a statement on their Web site. “All indications point to a suicide,” the statement said. Forum founder Klaus Schwab said in a statement that the organizers appreciated Reinhardt’s professionalism and kindness over years of cooperation.
■UNITED STATES
Detainee sent to Switzerland
An Uzbek detainee held at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been sent to Switzerland for resettlement, the US Justice Department said on Tuesday. The prisoner was the latest transferred from the facility as the Obama administration seeks to close the controversial prison opened in 2002 to house foreign terrorism suspects. Obama’s goal to close it within a year of taking office went unfulfilled last week. There are still 192 prisoners at the facility, which has long been criticized by human rights activists and foreign governments. The Swiss agreed to take the Guantanamo detainee on humanitarian grounds and said that he posed no danger.
■ISRAEL
Top judge hit by sneaker
A man hurled a shoe at the Supreme Court president yesterday, hitting her on the head and knocking her over during proceedings, officials said. The shoe hit judge Dorit Beinisch, 67, on the forehead and nose, breaking her glasses, her husband, Yeheskiel Beinisch, told public radio. Beinisch received treatment in her chambers before returning to applause from the court about an hour after the incident. “This moves me more than what happened earlier,” she told the court. A man in his fifties stood up during the session and hurled a pair of sneakers, yelling “corrupt” and “rotten,” public radio said. Bailiffs seized the man, who apparently felt wronged by an earlier court decision, media said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Beinisch to express his shock.
■UNITED STATES
Judge rejects Reid petition
A judge on Tuesday rejected a request by convicted shoe-bomber Richard Reid to relax special restrictions on his incarceration that include limits on his communications with the outside world. Reid, who pleaded guilty to trying to blow up a jumbo jet in late 2001 with explosives in his shoes, had challenged restrictions placed on him at Supermax Prison in Colorado, which severely limited his communications and activities. He petitioned a federal court saying the restrictions denied him his rights to practice his Sunni Muslim faith, or to learn Arabic, order books and magazines, watch television news and communicate with anyone beyond his family and lawyers.
■COLOMBIA
Intel officers to stand trial
The government said on Tuesday that seven intelligence officials would stand trial, charged with wiretapping human rights workers, journalists and opposition politicians in a scandal that has hurt the government’s image. Critics of President Alvaro Uribe say his government has misused the Administrative Security Department, known by its Spanish initials DAS, which reports directly to his office and has been plagued by accusations of corruption. Among those charged is former agency deputy director Jose Narvaez.
■CANADA
Vancouver to use ‘bait cars’
British Columbia police will use “bait cars” to trap automobile thieves during next month’s Winter Olympics, provincial solicitor general Kash Heed said on Tuesday. The bait cars are part of an increasingly successful battle against local property crime, widely blamed on drug addicts, since Vancouver won the 2010 Games. This western metropolis, with its reputed tolerance for recreational drugs and services for addicts, has long been notorious for its high rate of property crime, especially car theft.
■UNITED STATES
Old pedophile locked uo
A centenarian pedophile in New York state has been detained after failing to undergo mandatory mental health treatment, the Buffalo News daily reported. Theodore Sypnier, 100, was locked up late last week after being declared in violation of parole conditions for his conviction involving young sisters in the late 1990s, the report said. He failed to participate in sex offender counseling and now faces a court hearing within the next 30 days.
■CANADA
PETA pie-thrower a terroist?
Throwing a pie in the face of the fisheries minister to protest the seal hunt should earn animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) a “terrorist” label, a lawmaker said on Tuesday. A seal hunt protester hit Fisheries Minister Gail Shea with a cream pie on Monday as she gave a speech in Burlington, Ontario. The animal rights group PETA later claimed responsibility for the incident. Opposition lawmaker Gerry Byrne urged for an investigation into the incident that also takes into account Shea’s position as a top government official. PETA officials dismissed Byrne’s comments as a “silly, chest-beating exercise.”
■CHILE
Allende’s aides identified
Forensic scientists have identified the bodies of 11 people who were among the last to see President Salvador Allende alive, rallying around him as General Augusto Pinochet’s forces bombarded the presidential palace in 1973. Forty of the socialist leader’s aides and supporters stayed with him during the military’s withering attack on the La Moneda palace. Many surrendered or were captured, but Allende, who had vowed not to be taken alive, slipped away and went upstairs, where he was found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.
■UNITED STATES
Obama to freeze salaries
President Barack Obama will freeze the salaries of senior White House officials and other top political appointees for savings of US$4 million in fiscal 2011, a senior administration official said on Tuesday. The official said Obama, in his State of the Union address on Wednesday, would likely mention the move, which will expand on the pay freeze he ordered last year.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the