■AFGHANISTAN
Japanese journalist held
A Japanese freelance journalist missing in Afghanistan since last week is being held by the Taliban. Kosuke Tsuneoka, 40, is in the hands of a Taliban group in the northern province of Kunduz, the Jiji Press news agency reported, citing an unnamed Taliban commander. Yomiuri Shimbun, also citing an anonymous Taliban source, reported that the journalist was kidnapped in Baghlan Province to the south of Kunduz and was being held in one of those two provinces. In his last Twitter posting on Thursday, Tsuneoka, who has covered conflicts in Russia’s Chechnya, Iraq and Afghanistan, said he had gone into a Taliban-controlled area in the country’s north early on Wednesday.
■SOUTH KOREA
Refugee status granted
The Seoul Administrative Court ruled yesterday that a Myanmar missionary should be granted refugee status, saying he was likely to face political persecution if sent home. The court overturned a government bid to deport the man, and noting he had taken part in pro-democracy rallies in South Korea. “The judges considered it a high possibility that the man will be persecuted if returned to Myanmar. His statement claiming he fled in fear of persecution by the military after engaging in Christian missionary work has been considered consistent,” a spokesman for the court said.
■PAKISTAN
Fuel tankers attacked
Taliban armed with gasoline bombs and rockets attacked a terminal in the northwest yesterday, torching eight tankers used to supply fuel to NATO forces in Afghanistan. Dozens of fighters launched the attack at Zakha Khel in the tribal district of Khyber before dawn, local administration chief Shafeerullah Wazir said. There were no casualties in the attack because there were no drivers or passengers in the tankers at the time, said another official, Rehan Gul Khattak.
■GERMANY
Pacifists demonstrate
Thousands of pacifists demonstrated at the weekend as part of traditional “Easter Marches” which this year focused on the country’s unpopular military intervention in Afghanistan. The demonstrations came after three German soldiers were killed in a Taliban ambush in Afghanistan late on Friday, after which German troops mistakenly killed six Afghan soldiers, according to authorities. About 2,200 people demonstrated on Sunday in Berlin on a former Soviet military landing strip organizers said. Demonstrators also gathered in the western city of Cologne on Sunday. On Saturday, 1,200 pacifists marched in the southern city of Munich and 1,500 in Stuttgart in the southwest on the 50th anniversary of the “Easter Marches.”
■INDIA
Murder trial begins
The trial of two men accused of killing British teenage girl Scarlett Keeling in the resort state of Goa two years ago was to start yesterday. Federal investigators formally charged the men late last year over the 2008 death of 15-year-old Keeling. Keeling’s mother, Fiona MacKeown, will be called to testify in the trial and a verdict is expected by the end of the year, lawyer S. Rivonkar said on Friday. Police allege that Keeling was given a cocktail of illegal drugs and dumped unconscious in shallow water where she drowned. Two Goans, Samson D’Souza and Placido Carvalho, have been charged with culpable homicide, using force with “intent to outrage her modesty” and administering a drug with intent to harm.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Blairs set off false alarm
Former prime minister Tony Blair and his wife sparked a fire alert when they were trying to cook breakfast at their country home, sending four fire engines racing to the scene, a spokesman said. Blair and wife Cherie were making toast on Saturday at their 17th-century property in Wotton Underwood, England, when the smoke alarm went off. As the house is on an official list of buildings deemed to be of historic interest, the alarm was automatically connected to the local fire station, Blair’s spokesman said on Sunday. “The Blairs were cooking breakfast when the smoke alarm went off,” he said. “In fact it was just smoke without a fire, but by the time Mrs Blair rang the fire service to tell them they didn’t need to come, they were already on their way.” The local fire service said three fire engines arrived, and a fourth was on its way before it became clear the alarm was false. “The smoke was cleared with a fan and the firefighters gave some fire safety advice,” a spokesman for the service said.
■RUSSIA
Suicide blast kills two cops
Two police officers were killed yesterday by a suicide bomber in a restive North Caucasus province near Chechnya, investigators said. Svetlana Gorbakova of the Investigative Committee said a suicide attacker approached police headquarters in the town of Karabulak in the province of Ingushetia and detonated his explosives. The blast killed two police officers and wounded another. Gorbakova said that half an hour later a vehicle parked near the police headquarters exploded, wounding a worker at the local prosecutor’s office.
■IRAN
Reformist back in jail
A top reformist close to former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is back in jail to serve a one-year sentence, the state newspaper Iran said yesterday. Hossein Marashi was jailed last month after being found guilty of spreading propaganda against the Islamic regime and temporarily released to spend the New Year holiday with his family. Marashi was Rafsanjani’s chief of staff during the cleric’s presidency from 1989 to 1997 and later served as a vice president to reformist former president Mohammad Khatami. Marashi’s Executives of Construction party was a key backer of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi in last year’s disputed presidential poll.
■TURKEY
New envoy to Israel: report
Local TV said the government would name a new ambassador to Israel to replace the envoy who was humiliated by an Israeli official. Private NTV television on Sunday reported that Oguz Celikkol was to be replaced by diplomat Kerim Uras. Celikkol did not receive a handshake and was forced to sit on a low sofa during a January meeting with Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon,w ho had summoned Celikkol to protest a Turkish TV show. Turkey had threatened to recall the ambassador, forcing Ayalon to apologize. There was no immediate official confirmation of Sunday’s report.
■ISRAEL
Militants fire rocket: report
Palestinian militants fired a rocket from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel on Sunday night, the Israeli military said, but there were no reports of casualties or damage. Local media reported that the rocket landed in an empty field. Gaza militants have stepped up rocket fire lately. One recent projectile killed a Thai worker on a collective farm, and Israel’s armed forces have repeatedly raided the Gaza Strip in response.
■UNITED STATES
Church loses US$3 billion
The pedophile priest crisis has cost the local chapter of the Roman Catholic Church nearly US$3 billion, but only a fraction of the perpetrators faced prison and little has been done to punish those who covered up the crimes. After years of painful revelations, massive payouts, soul searching and reforms, the child sex abuse scandal has spread across the globe and in recent weeks has struck the church at its very core. Pope Benedict XVI, long celebrated for speaking out against abuse, faces allegations that he helped to protect predator priests as archbishop of Munich and later as the Vatican’s chief morals enforcer. A CBS News poll released on Friday showed that more than two-thirds of Americans think the pope has done a bad job in handling the crisis. His favorability rating among American Catholics has fallen to 27 percent from 40 percent in 2006.
■MEXICO
Thirteen prisoners escape
Thirteen inmates escaped when armed men stormed a prison in the northern border city of Reynosa, an official with the federal Attorney-General’s Office said on Sunday. It was the second mass jailbreak in less than two weeks in Tamaulipas state, which has been wracked by a new wave of battles between feuding drug gangs. Thirty-one guards have been detained for questioning in the Friday prison break in Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity under the agency’s policy. Three prisoners were shot to death in the raid, but it was unclear who killed them. The Tamaulipas government had reported the raid and the death of the three prisoners late Friday, but did not mention the escapes. Its three-sentence statement said the armed men arrived in 10 cars and exchanged gunfire with guards.
■CUBA
Raul Castro pans ‘blackmail’
President Raul Castro defiantly pledged on Sunday not to cede to pressure from dissident hunger strikers, calling the actions “blackmail” organized by Europe and the US. The president charged that the US and Europe were waging “an unprecedented publicity war” against Havana supported, he said, by “major Western media.” Castro was referring to the uproar over the case of dissident Guillermo Farinas, 48, who has been on hunger strike for the past month. A psychologist by training who became a cyber-journalist amid the state monopoly on the media, Farinas has been jailed three times for opposing the Americas’ only one-party communist regime. He decided to go on a full hunger strike when he learned of the death on Feb. 23 of Orlando Zapata, 85 days into a hunger strike, to protest prison conditions.
■PAKISTAN
US consulate under attack
Four bombs exploded in quick succession yesterday close to the US Consulate in the northwestern city of Peshawar, police and witnesses said. Gunfire was also heard close to the heavily guarded and fortified building, police officer Aziz Khan said. Two of the blasts took place about 20m from the main entrance to the building, a reporter close to the scene said. Huge plumes of smoke rose high into the air. It was unclear if the building itself was damaged. The US Embassy in Islamabad said it could not comment. Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants have long vowed to attack the US, which has fired scores of missiles at them in their northwestern strongholds close to the border over the last one-and-a-half years.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the