■THAILAND
Policeman killed in blast
Multiple attacks in the troubled south yesterday killed a policeman and injured dozens more police and civilians, officials said. Two men riding a motorcycle tossed a hand grenade toward 50 police officers as they received a morning briefing from their commander at the Pattani provincial police station, a spokesman said. The blast killed a sergeant and injured 43 officers, with two in critical condition. Two hours later and just 30m away, a car bomb exploded, injuring another 17 people.
■SOUTH KOREA
Sex bribe probe launched
The country’s top prosecutor yesterday launched a probe into allegations that dozens of prosecutors had been bribed with sex with prostitutes by a builder in return for business favors. Prosecutor-General Kim Joon-gyu opened an investigation after a TV program disclosed a detailed list of 57 prosecutors and their alleged activities. The businessman told MBC television that he had offered sex with prostitutes and other bribes to around 100 prosecutors in Busan and its surroundings since 1984. He disclosed a list of “bribed” prosecutors and their cellphone numbers, giving detailed written accounts of sex, drinks, cash and other favors being offered. The prosecutors involved deny the charges.
■MALAYSIA
Pirate attacks fell this year
The number of pirate attacks around the world fell in the first three months of this year, a maritime watchdog said, though the risk off the Somali coast remained high. There were 67 reported incidents of piracy and armed robbery on the high seas, down from 102 in the same period last year, the International Maritime Bureau said in a report. The decrease was attributed to a dramatic decline in pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden, where reported incidents fell to 17, from 41 last year. An international armada has been patrolling the Gulf, one of the globe’s busiest maritime trade routes, since 2008 in a bid to stop pirates from hijacking commercial vessels.
■THAILAND
Illegal ivory tusks seized
Authorities said yesterday they have seized a massive ivory haul, confiscating 296 elephant tusks sent from Qatar to Bangkok international airport. The customs department said they acted on a tip-off to discover the tusks in a shipment declared as “printing metal,” bound for a Thai company based in the capital. A customs official said the tusks, weighing 1,390kg and valued at 70 million baht (US$2.2 million dollars), most likely originated from southern Africa. The case is under investigation and no arrests have yet been made, the official said.
■INDIA
Protest over food prices
Thousands of demonstrators rallied in the capital, New Delhi, yesterday to protest against fast-rising food prices and other consumer bills. Many demonstrators from neighboring states arrived on special buses and trains for the rally organized by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to protest food inflation. BJP president Nitin Gadkari has blamed the “wrong economic policies of the government” for the price rises. High inflation, especially affecting food, is a lightning rod for unrest in the country, where 370 million people live below the poverty line. The opposition has blamed the ruling Congress party for failing to keep a check on prices since it returned to power in elections last year on the back of pro-poor policies.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Woman gets Chinese twang
A British woman has suddenly started speaking with a Chinese accent after suffering a severe migraine, she said in comments quoted by media on Tuesday. Sarah Colwill believes she has Foreign Accent Syndrome, which has caused her distinctive West Country drawl to be replaced with a Chinese twang, even though she has never even visited China. The 35-year-old from Plymouth is now undergoing speech therapy following an acute form of migraine last month which reportedly left her with a form of brain damage. “I moved to Plymouth when I was 18 months old so I have always spoken like a local. But following one attack, an ambulance crew arrived and they said I definitely sounded Chinese,” she said.
■UNITED STATES
UK’s Ferguson wants show
Britain’s Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, has guest hosted ABC’s The View, CNN’s Larry King Live and is a special correspondent for NBC’s Today show, but now she wants her own US TV program. “I want it to be a show that is me on the streets,” Ferguson told reporters over afternoon tea to promote the release on Tuesday of her Oscar-winning film The Young Victoria on Blu-ray and DVD. “I want it [to be] me going round [in] middle America,” she said. “I want to go out and see what the needs are and then the audience has to challenge me ... to go and fix the school in Boise or get another restaurant in Allentown.”
■GAZA STRIP
Hamas burns painkillers
Hamas rulers have burned more than 1 million pills of a painkiller many locals take because they say it relaxes them. Hamas Health Minister Basim Naim said on Saturday that the drug, Tramadol, was confiscated from smugglers who sneak it through tunnels under the border with Egypt. At the territory’s largest hospital, workers tossed sacks of the drug into an incinerator. Naim said many people are addicted to Tramadol, which is supposed to be available only by prescription. The drug is a mild opioid and experts say regular use can cause flulike withdrawal symptoms. Hamas has also banned smoking in government offices and recently seized cigarettes from shops to collect taxes on them.
■IRAQ
AI calls for torture probe
Amnesty International (AI) has urged Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to probe allegations that his Shiite-dominant security forces tortured hundreds of Sunni detainees at a secret prison in Baghdad. Referring to a report in the Los Angeles Times, quoting Iraqi officials who said more than 100 prisoners were tortured by electric shocks, suffocated with plastic bags or beaten, the London-based rights group called for an inquiry. “The existence of secret jails indicates that military units in Iraq are allowed to commit human rights abuses unchecked,” Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa deputy director Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui said in a statement on Monday.
■CANADA
Lap dances cost teachers job
Two teachers have lost their jobs for performing a raunchy lap dance in front of high school students that became an overnight Internet sensation, education officials said on Tuesday. “The Winnipeg School Division has accepted teacher Chrystie Fitchner’s resignation. The short term contract for Adeil Ahmed has run its course and expired ... and will not be renewed,” said a statement. Both teachers at the Churchill High School were suspended last month for performing “an inappropriate dance during a school spirit week,” it said.
■ARGENTINA
Dictator gets 25 years
The nation’s last dictator was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison on Tuesday for torture and kidnappings committed during his 1976-1983 military regime. Reynaldo Bignone, 82, was convicted along with five former military officers for 56 cases involving torture, illegal detentions and other crimes in one of the nation’s largest torture centers, the Campo de Mayo military base. Human rights groups say that of the 4,000 dissidents taken to the base, about 50 emerged alive. The army-run base also had a clandestine maternity center where detained dissidents gave birth only to have officials take their babies away to be adopted by military families. Bignone was de facto president from 1982 to 1983, but the crimes he was convicted of were committed between 1976 and 1978, when he was a commander at the Campo Mayo base.
■UNITED STATES
Plane joker settles
The government has agreed to drop a charge against a man who was accused of interfering with a Hawaiian Airlines jetliner crew. The Oregonian newspaper reported that under an agreement signed on Tuesday by a federal magistrate, the charge would be dropped if 57-year-old Joseph Johnson of Salem, Oregon, successfully completed a six-month diversion program. That includes writing an apology to the airlines and his fellow passengers. The FBI said Johnson was flying from Portland to Maui, Hawaii, on Jan. 6, when he handed a flight attendant a comment card that asked “what if the plane ripped apart in mid-flight.” The pilot became alarmed and returned the Boeing 767 to Portland. Johnson said the card was intended as a joke.
■UNITED STATES
Serial rapist executed
A serial rapist who strangled a 16-year-old girl in 1988 and who had argued he might be violently allergic to the state’s execution drug was put to death on Tuesday with no apparent complications. As the lethal injection began, Darryl Durr clenched his fists, grimaced and held his head up for about 10 seconds before gently putting it down. It wasn’t clear if he was in pain or emotionally reacting to the moment. Durr, 46, was pronounced dead at 10:36am at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. “He was a monster,” the victim’s mother, Norma Jean Godsey, said after witnessing the execution. Durr kidnapped Angel Vincent from her home in 1988, while her mother and stepfather were away at a party, prosecutors said. He raped and strangled her with a dog chain.
■UNITED STATES
Feds ‘liars’: Blagojevich
Former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich on Tuesday described the federal prosecutors who have brought racketeering and fraud charges against him as “cowards and liars” and challenged US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald to meet him face to face in court if he is “man enough.” In an extraordinary outburst timed to go live on evening news shows, Blagojevich said prosecutors had treated his wife unfairly and were now “sneaking into court” in an effort to prevent jurors from hearing all of the tapes the FBI made of his telephone conversations. “They are cowards and they are liars,” Blagojevich said, raising his voice to a full throated shout as he stood before a battery of cameras in front of his lawyer’s South Side office. “They know when all those tapes will be played they will show I’ve done nothing wrong and will prove my innocence,” the impeached former governor said. He and his attorneys left without taking questions.
‘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