■SOUTH KOREA
Seoul hiding N Koreans
About 50 North Korean refugees are taking refuge in South Korean diplomatic missions in China, living like prisoners because of security concerns, a Seoul rights group said yesterday. Up to 30 of the total have stayed more than one year in the Beijing embassy or consulates elsewhere, the Citizen’s Coalition for Human Rights of Abductees and North Korean refugees said. “The embassy restricts their movement and communication with relatives outside because of tight security and surveillance by Chinese police,” coalition head Do Hee-yeun said. He said China had intentionally delayed negotiations with South Korea about their departure to Seoul to show that the embassy is not a safe refuge.
■CHINA
Snow leopard killers jailed
Two herdsmen have been jailed for killing a rare snow leopard after setting a trap for wild animals that preyed on their sheep, Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday. The herdsmen were sentenced to eight and 10 years in prison for killing the snow leopard in Xinjiang by the Manas County People’s Court on Feb. 28. They were convicted of illegally catching and killing rare and endangered wild animals, local official Yang Jianwei said.
■INDONESIA
Terror suspects arrested
Police said two men had been arrested in Java on suspicion of supplying guns to a terrorist cell in the western province of Aceh. Police Chief General Bambang Hendarso Danuri said yesterday that one man was arrested in Jakarta and the other outside the capital in West Java province. He did not say when. Police have arrested 18 men in recent days in a crackdown on what they call a new terror group in Aceh believed to have links to Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian offshoot of al-Qaeda.
■MALAYSIA
Anwar loses final appeal
Former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim has lost his final court battle to declare as unlawful his sacking in 1998, his lawyer said yesterday. Anwar was sacked from his posts as deputy prime minister and finance minister by then-prime minister Mahathir Mohamad in September 1998. Anwar launched a legal suit the same year, arguing the move was unconstitutional. The case has been rejected twice by the lower courts in 1998 and 2007, and the Federal Court — the country’s highest court — upheld the decision yesterday, saying the dismissal was executed lawfully. “We are most disappointed but not surprised with the decision,” Anwar’s lawyer Sankara Nair said.
■HONG KONG
Third acid attack hits city
An acid-filled beer bottle was dropped onto a street in the same area of the densely populated territory for the third time in six months, police said yesterday, fueling media speculation about a serial attacker. In the latest attack on Sunday, a beer bottle containing an acidic substance broke after being dropped onto an awning at street level in Shamshuipo District, with the liquid splashing onto the face of male passer-by, police said in a statement. “There was a bang, and people looked up and saw lots of smoke. And someone called the police. The bang was loud. The pedestrians ran away immediately,” a female shopkeeper who works nearby was quoted as saying in the South China Morning Post yesterday. No one has been arrested, police said. The injured man rinsed his face with water and left before officers arrived on the scene.
■ISRAEL
Disputed homes allowed
Tel Aviv has given the green light for the building of 112 new homes in a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank despite a partial moratorium on such construction, a minister said yesterday. The houses will be built in the Beitar Ilit settlement near Bethlehem, Environment Minister Gilad Erdan told public radio. The country’s continued expansion of settlements is one of the biggest obstacles to the resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians, now suspended for more than a year. The new project came to light the day after the Palestinians agreed to indirect peace talks with Israel, but warned that the US-mediated negotiations could collapse if Tel Aviv continued expanding settlements.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Three fall from high-rise
Two men and a woman died after falling from a high-rise apartment building in the Scottish city of Glasgow on Sunday, police said. Strathclyde Police said officers were called at about 8:40am by a concierge at the building on the city’s north side. Officers set up a cordon and erected a white tent in front of the building while forensic officers examined the scene. Police said there did not appear to be any suspicious circumstances. The Glasgow Housing Association, which owns the building, said it was rented to the YMCA and used to house refugees and asylum-seekers. It is part of the Red Road development, a 1960s public housing project made up of blocks up to 31 stories high.
■IRAN
Two traffickers hanged
Two convicted drug traffickers were hanged in the western city of Khorramabad, the official IRNA news agency reported yesterday. The report identified them only as Gh. B. and H. R and added the two were hanged early this week — the Persian week begins on Saturday. No other details were given. The latest hangings bring to at least 27 the number of people executed so far this year. Last year, at least 270 people were hanged in the Islamic republic.
■SERBIA
Yugoslav dissident dies
Prominent former Yugoslav dissident Mihajlo Mihajlov, who was jailed during communism for his articles and essays before he emigrated to the West, has died. He was 76. Mihajlov died on Sunday at his home in Belgrade, state TV said. The cause of death was not made public. Mihajlov left the former Yugoslavia at 1978, after spending a total of seven years in prison for work published in the West critical of the Yugoslav government. Mihajlov acquired US citizenship in 1985 and taught Russian literature at Yale, Ohio State University and the University of Virginia, as well as in Scotland and in West Germany.
■FRANCE
Military seizes 35 pirates
The frigate Nivose has seized 35 pirates in three days off Somalia, the military said on Sunday, claiming “the biggest seizure” so far in the vital shipping lane. In the latest of four operations since Friday, eleven pirates were intercepted on Sunday with the help of other ships and a Spanish maritime patrol airplane participating in the European Atalanta anti-piracy mission. Four mother ships and six smaller boats had been seized in the four operations since Friday, the military said. The EU launched its Atalanta mission in December 2008 in a bid to secure one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, joining forces with US-led and NATO missions, as well as other warships from other naval powers.
■MEXICO
Capital cuts cops’ calories
Mexico City’s police department has introduced a new lower-calorie menu in cafeterias serving its 70,000-member force after finding out that almost three-quarters of officers are overweight. Hungry cops will now get 2,495 calories per day, 500 fewer than in previous servings, along with a healthy portion of vegetables. The three-meal-a-day menu announced on Sunday comes after a study found that at least 70 percent of officers are overweight.
■JAMAICA
Museum to celebrate reggae
A new music museum is set to open next year in Kingston that officials say will feature rare pieces from the island’s music history, such as the sole album that the reggae star Bob Marley produced before he gained international fame. Artifacts will include a cassette tape in which another reggae great, Peter Tosh, jams a blues song with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, museum curator Herbie Miller said on Sunday. The tape was recorded in June 1977, said Miller, who was Tosh’s former manager. The museum is requesting donations to help preserve the country’s vibrant music history.
■UNITED STATES
Net services to be exported
Washington will allow technology companies to export Internet services to Iran, Cuba and Sudan in a bid to exploit their libertarian potential, the New York Times reported late on Sunday. “The more people have access to a range of Internet technology and services, the harder it’s going to be for the Iranian government to clamp down on their speech and free expression,” a senior administration official told the paper. The Treasury Department was due to issue a general license yesterday for exports of free personal Internet services such as instant messaging, chat and photo sharing as well as software to all three countries, said the unnamed official. The move will allow Microsoft, Yahoo and other Internet services providers to get around strict export restrictions, the report said. Until now they had resisted offering such services for fear of violating existing sanctions.
■MEXICO
Church slams mayor
Mexico’s Roman Catholic Church has published its harshest criticism to date of leftist Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, accusing his administration of botching issues ranging from crime to public transit. The church has often disagreed with Ebrard’s Democratic Revolution Party. An editorial published on Sunday on the Archdiocese of Mexico’s Web site accused Ebrard of “following the line set down by foreign groups” in approving legalized abortion and same-sex marriages.
■CANADA
Islamist group to be banned
Ottawa will list al-Shabaab — a Somali-based Islamist militant group which recently pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda — as a “terrorist group” to prevent it from operating or seeking funds, the Canadian government said on Sunday. Canada said it took action after it received reports from the Somali community that al-Shabaab has attempted to radicalize and recruit young Canadians. “This government ... is determined that terrorist groups do not receive support from Canadian sources,” Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews said in a statement. The listing prohibits Canadians from knowingly dealing with assets al-Shabaab owns or controls. It also makes it a criminal offense to knowingly participate in, contribute to, or facilitate certain activities of the group.
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
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema