■AFGHANISTAN
Police kill seven civilians
Border police mistook a group of villagers gathering wood near the Pakistan border as insurgents and opened fire, killing seven civilians, a police official said yesterday. All six officers involved in Friday’s pre-dawn shooting have been arrested and the incident is under investigation, said General Abdul Raziq, the commander of the border police of southern Afghanistan. The border area is a common transit route for both Taliban militants and smugglers, and border police regularly are attacked in the area. The officers were driving through Kandahar Province’s Shorabak District before sunrise on Friday when they spotted the group of seven men and thought they were about to be ambushed, Raziq said.
■VIETNAM
Four die in shootout
Three policemen and a local resident died after a shootout with an alleged drug trafficker, state-linked media reported yesterday. The wanted man, Vang A Khua, was also killed, VietnamNet news Web site reported. He allegedly used a Kalashnikov assault rifle to open fire on anti-narcotics officers who surrounded his home on Friday in Hoa Binh, a mountainous province southwest of Hanoi. One policeman and a local resident died at the scene while two other officers succumbed to injuries later in hospital, the report said, adding three other policemen were wounded in the raid. Thanh Nien newspaper said Khua, 54, took his daughter hostage during the incident but she was freed safely.
■MALAYSIA
Engines found in Uruguay
Two missing US-made fighter jet engines, worth US$29 million and stolen from a military airbase, have been traced to Uruguay, a report said yesterday. Attorney general Abdul Gani Patail said Kuala Lumpur was informed about the discovery by Montevideo and had made moves to secure the return of the engines. “We have sought the assistance of the relevant authorities in Uruguay to seek confirmation on the location of the engines and their subsequent return,” he was quoted as saying by the Star newspaper. The government is facing a storm of criticism over allegations of official corruption after the theft of the engines. Last month an air force sergeant and a businessman were charged over the theft. The accused pair both pleaded not guilty.
■PHILIPPINES
Police hunt senator
Police are searching for a senator suspected of murder even though the politician says he has fled abroad, officials said yesterday. Arrest warrants have been served in the ancestral home and the local residence of Senator Panfilo Lacson even while police are coordinating with Interpol to locate him, said Senior Superintendent Benito Estipona, head of the investigation office. “Three teams as of now are looking for him in Metropolitan Manila and we have also furnished all regional offices of the investigation division with copies of the warrant of arrest,” he told reporters. Lacson left the country for Hong Kong on Jan. 5, anticipating that he would face arrest, but Estipona said they could not locate him and would not rule out the possibility he had slipped back into the Philippines. An arrest warrant was issued on Friday for Lacson for the November 2000 murder of Salvador Dacer, a publicist of former president Fidel Ramos, and his driver when Lacson was national police chief under then-president Joseph Estrada. Media have suggested Dacer was killed because of his knowledge of alleged wrongdoing in the Estrada administration.
■UNITED STATES
‘Snowpocalypse’ looms
An “extremely dangerous” blizzard expected to dump record amounts of snow pounded the east yesterday, closing down the capital and threatening to trap millions indoors for days. The National Weather Service (NWS) put the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area under a rare 24-hour blizzard warning starting at 10pm on Friday. The storm, dubbed “Snowpocalypse” and “Snowmageddon” by many locals, stretched from Indiana to Pennsylvania and into parts of New York and North Carolina, creating treacherous travel conditions, shutting Washington area airports and leading several states to declare emergencies. The NWS forecast up to 76cm of snow in the capital region, which would shatter Washington’s 88-year-old record snowfall of 28 inches in the “Great Knickerbocker Storm.”
■UNITED STATES
Panel falls off jet in flight
A car-sized panel from a cargo jet fell out of the sky on Friday and crashed into a mall parking lot in Florida, startling shoppers but causing no injuries or damage, the airline said. Federal authorities and Atlas Air were investigating why the 68kg canoe-shaped fairing detached from the wing of a Boeing 747 cargo plane as it approached Miami International Airport at the end of a flight from Santiago, Chile. The plane had no problems landing, the Federal Aviation Administration said. And while no one was injured in the incident, it could have been deadly. The Atlas jet was about 4km from the airport at an altitude of 450m when the fiberglass panel fell from the plane’s flap assembly at about 11:35am. Flaps, when extended, help a plane slow down.
■UNITED STATES
Mustangs rounded up
Federal land managers finished a roundup of wild horses from the range north of Reno. Bureau of Land Management officials on Friday said 1,922 mustangs were removed from the Calico Mountains Complex. Agency spokeswoman JoLynn Worley said an estimated 600 horses remain in the complex, which is within the management level of 600 to 900 set for the area. She said the agency had planned to remove about 2,500 horses but a lot of the mustangs roamed out of the complex after the roundup began on Dec. 28. Activists unsuccessfully sued to stop the roundup, saying it was unnecessary and inhumane. The bureau said the roundup was needed because an overpopulation of horses is harming native wildlife and the range.
■UNITED STATES
Man operates on his dog
A Rhode Island man who says he could not afford veterinary care for his dog has been charged with illegally operating on the pet. Alan MacQuattie recently removed a cyst from the leg of his 14-year-old Labrador mix. The dog was operated on again by professionals to deal with an infection from the first surgery. MacQuattie, 63, who says he is disabled and living on Social Security retiree benefits, said on Friday he used local anesthetic to operate on the cyst.
■UNITED STATES
Nuclear plant probes leak
Officials at a Vermont nuclear plant say they’re investigating whether a leak in an underground pipe connected to a sump pit may be responsible for a radioactive substance turning up in groundwater samples at the plant. Vermont Yankee plant officials said on Friday they found tritium levels in the sump pit that are three times higher than those recently found in groundwater samples.
‘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