■PHILIPPINES
Attacks in south kill four
At least four people were killed as gunmen detonated bombs and attacked civilians on a southern island yesterday, the military said. Three marines and a policeman were killed when the gunmen ambushed them as they rushed to Basilan island’s capital Isabela City after the first of two bombs exploded, regional army spokesman Lieutenant Steffani Cacho said. Cacho said the first bomb tore through a van parked near a sports grandstand and a government office. A second bomb damaged a Catholic church.
■AFGHANISTAN
Insurgent attacks spread
Four policemen were killed when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in the northwest, the Interior Ministry said yesterday. Two others were injured and their vehicle destroyed in the attack Monday in Faryab Province. Elsewhere, three women were killed and four injured after mortars fired by suspected insurgents fell on their homes in Kapisa Province just north of the capital, Kabul. The insurgents apparently had been targeting the local district government headquarters, the ministry said.
■CHINA
Crime boss sentenced
A crime boss was sentenced to life in jail in Chongqing, a city whose party secretary is using a crackdown on organized crime to boost his political fortunes. Chongqing’s chief, Bo Xilai (薄熙來) launched the crackdown last year, gaining a burst of popularity nationwide in what some analysts saw as a bid to join China’s top political body during the 2012 leadership transition. The life sentence for Wang Xiaojun (王小軍), accused of running brothels and online gambling, comes shortly before the expected sentencing of Chongqing’s former justice chief and deputy police director, Wen Qiang (文強). The court found that Wang had bribed four police officers, including Wen, who served under Bo’s predecessor and political rival, Wang Yang (汪洋), the party secretary of Guangdong Province. Although Bo’s crackdown has garnered support from a public tired of police corruption, it has also raised alarm from Beijing’s legal community who complain the crackdown was turning into a series of political show trials.
■INDONESIA
Plane skids off runway
A passenger plane skidded off the end of an airport runway while landing in heavy rain yesterday in the remote Papua Province, injuring about 20 people, officials said. The Boeing 737, operated by Merpati Nusantara Airlines, was landing at Manokwari airport when it slid into a small canal at the end of the runway, a police official said. He said the plane flew in from Sorong.
■UNITED KINGDOM
School to teach pole dance
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A renowned debating society at Cambridge University said on Monday it would offer pole dancing tuition to members, in a building more used to the presence of international statesmen. The Cambridge Union Society said female students would be offered lessons in the sensuous dance more often associated with strip clubs than the historic chambers of a top university. Lessons would be given in the Blue Room at the union’s building, which is more commonly used for debates, the society said.
■UNITED STATES
Carbs pose threat to women
Women who consume large amounts of certain high-carbohydrate foods increase their risk of heart disease, a study said on Monday. The study showed increased incidences of coronary disease in women — but not men — whose diet is rich in foods with a “high glycemic index,” such as white bread, sweets and some sugary breakfast cereals. The study noted that all high-carbohydrate diets increase the levels of blood glucose and harmful blood fats known as triglycerides while reducing levels of protective HDL or “good” cholesterol, thereby increasing heart disease risk. However, the researchers found not all carbohydrates have the same effect on blood glucose levels. They concluded that blood glucose and triglycerides were impacted more by foods with a high glycemic index, compared with other carbohydrates with a lower index, such as fruits, vegetables and whole grains.
■SOUTH AFRICA
Library opens in rural area
Children returning to classes in the southeast of the country on Monday have a new library, part of a campaign to improve education in impoverished rural areas of the country. Sakhisizwe Primary School in the Mount Ayliff area, 400km south of Johannesburg, doesn’t have running water. However, it now has a library with 956 new books in Xhosa, English and Afrikaans. Sakhisizwe’s library is shared by five schools. Some children travel 40km to use the library. The independent group Equal Education said only 8 percent of schools in the country have a functional library.
■EGYPT
Road accident kills soldier
A security official says a road accident near the border with Israel has killed one Egyptian soldier and left 21 seriously injured. The official says a truck carrying soldiers driving back to base collided head-on with a merchant truck. The accident took place yesterday morning in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, about 30km from the Israeli border. He said some of the soldiers had serious head injuries and were receiving medical attention at the hospital in nearby city of El-Arish. About 6,000 people die every year in road accidents in the country.
■ISRAEL
Military strikes Gaza
A Palestinian gunman was killed and three wounded in Israeli military strikes in the Gaza Strip yesterday, Palestinian medics and the Israeli army said. A spokesman for the Islamic Jihad militant group said Israeli tanks fired shells and a helicopter launched a missile at its men east of the al-Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. An Israeli army spokeswoman said: “An Israeli force identified a number of suspects planting explosives along the security fence [with Gaza]. It fired at the suspects, identifying direct hits.” A Palestinian hospital source said the three wounded men were in serious condition.
■UNITED STATES
Rabbi jailed for sex abuse
A New York rabbi was sentenced on Monday to a maximum of 32 years in jail for the repeated sexual abuse of a 16-year-old boy, prosecutors said. Baruch Lebovits, 59, was convicted last month on eight charges of abuse of the teenager between 2004 and 2005, and was given the maximum sentence on each count. The rabbi is also a prominent businessman in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, where the teenager also lived, Kings County District Attorney Charles Hynes said. Two separate cases of Lebovits’s alleged sexual assaults on minors are still pending.
■BRAZIL
Rancher guilty of murder
A rancher accused of ordering the murder of US nun and Amazon defender Dorothy Stang was found guilty and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Jurors in the jungle city of Belem reached the decision late on Monday after 15 hours of deliberations, according to a statement on the Web site of a Para state court. In the last two decades, more than 1,200 people have been killed in land conflicts across the country, mostly in the Amazon region, said the Catholic Land Pastoral, a watchdog group that tracks rural violence in Latin America’s largest nation.
■UNITED STATES
Underwear Bomber in court
The Nigerian man dubbed the “Underwear Bomber” after allegedly trying to blow up a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day in an al-Qaeda plot returned to court yesterday. The pretrial hearing will deal with scheduling issues, a spokeswoman for his court-appointed lawyer said. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, pleaded not guilty in January to six terrorism-related charges. He faces a maximum penalty of life imprisonment if convicted. The son of a prominent Nigerian banker, Abdulmutallab was arrested after the botched al-Qaeda plot, in which explosives allegedly stitched into his underwear failed to detonate aboard a Northwest flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.
■UNITED STATES
O.J.’s appeal scheduled
A Nevada Supreme Court panel is scheduling oral arguments for June 11 in Las Vegas on pending appeals by O.J. Simpson and a co-defendant convicted of kidnapping, armed robbery and other charges in a September 2007 hotel room heist. The two men were tried together and convicted in 2008 of robbing two sports memorabilia dealers at gunpoint in Las Vegas of items Simpson said were his. Both filed appeals in May last year. The 62-year-old Simpson is serving nine to 33 years in a Nevada prison. Stewart is serving seven-and-a-half to 27 years.
■UNITED STATES
Terrorist met 9/11 associate
A court ruling reveals that a convicted terrorist met with a man later convicted of plotting to attack a French island who also had ties to some of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers. The ruling in the District Court, District of Columbia says Christopher Paul of Columbus, Ohio, may have visited with Karim Mehdi in Germany in 1993 and met him again for several weeks in 1997 or 1998. A State Department report says Mehdi was sentenced to nine years in prison in France in 2006 in connection with alleged plans to attack the Indian Ocean island of Reunion in 2003. The State Department alleges that Mehdi had ties to Ramzi Binalshibh and Ziad Jarrah. When Paul was indicted in 2007, prosecutors said a search warrant had found a postcard in Paul’s possessions addressed to him from “brother” Karim Mehdi.
‘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