PAKISTAN
Gunmen torch NATO tankers
A government official says gunmen in the southwest of the country set ablaze 14 tankers carrying fuel for US and NATO troops in Afghanistan. A driver was also wounded during the attack yesterday. Local Islamist militants and criminals frequently attack such convoys. Local official Fatteh Mohammed said the latest attack occurred in the Dera Murad Jamali area in Baluchistan Province. The tankers were parked at a roadside restaurant when eight gunmen struck.
INDONESIA
AI urges torture charges
Soldiers on trial for the alleged brutal abuse of two Papuans should be charged with torture rather than the minor offence of disobeying orders, Amnesty International (AI) said yesterday. The three soldiers appeared on Thursday before a military tribunal, after the online broadcast of a video showing the torture of unarmed men sparked an outcry. However, they were charged with disobeying orders rather than more serious crimes such as illegal detention and abuse. Military prosecutors said they lacked evidence of torture because the victims refused to testify. According to the National Human Rights Commission, the victims would like to testify but were terrified of military reprisals.
CHINA
Traffic chaos looms
About 230 million people are expected to travel during the Lunar New Year holiday season, which unleashes the world’s biggest annual human migration. Vice Minister of Railways Wang Zhiguo (王志國) told a press conference yesterday that the number of expected travelers is expected to rise 12.5 percent from last year. Wang’s comments were posted on the ministry’s Web site. The holiday travel season officially starts on Wednesday and ends Feb. 27, with the Lunar New Year falling on Feb. 3.
PHILIPPINES
Weeks of rain leave 47 dead
More than two weeks of heavy rains have left at least 47 people dead as a result of flash floods and landslides across the country the government said yesterday. Monsoon rains have battered parts of the country since Dec. 29, with more thunderstorms still forecast, the government weather station said. The National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said in a statement that 18,000 people were still housed in government evacuation centers because of continued danger.
BANGLADESH
‘Beggar Master’ nabbed
Security forces said yesterday they had arrested the alleged leader of a gang responsible for amputating the limbs of children and forcing them into begging. Omar Faruq, 30, was arrested on Friday in a Dhaka suburb, said Colonel Zia Ahsan of the elite Rapid Action Battalion. “He has admitted that his gang has amputated limbs of at least 15 children and forced them into begging in Dhaka and several other district towns. They have also raped girls to force them into prostitution,” Ahsan said. The mutilated children are rented out for up to 400 taka (US$6) a day, to women who take them begging at busy intersections. Bangladesh approved new laws last year to tackle “beggar masters,” providing penalties of at least three years’ imprisonment for anyone involved in coercing people into begging. According to a 2005 study, Bangladesh has 700,000 beggars, with those in urban areas earning an average of 100 taka (US$1.50) a day.
BULGARIA
Recall envoys: parliament
Parliament is increasing pressure President Georgi Parvanov to recall 33 ambassadors who served as agents of the former communist secret service. Lawmakers voted 152-33 on Friday to ask the president to remove the diplomats from their foreign posts. Parvanov, who himself was revealed in 2006 to have collaborated with the communist secret service, has opposed the move, saying every case should be considered separately. Last month, a panel investigating communist-era police files published the names of 192 leading diplomats who worked for the secret service. They include the ambassadors to the UN, China, Russia, Japan, Germany, Britain, Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey and Portugal.
UNITED KINGDOM
Blair ‘wobbled’ over Iraq
Former prime minister Tony Blair had “a bit of a wobble” at the start of a 1998 bombing raid against Iraq after a late-night session reading the Bible, his then-communications chief said yesterday. “TB [Tony Blair] was clearly having a bit of a wobble,” Alistair Campbell wrote in his latest book of diaries, extracts of which are being serialized in the Guardian newspaper. “He said he had been reading the Bible last night, as he often did when the really big decisions were on, and he had read something about John the Baptist and Herod which had caused him to rethink, albeit not change his mind.” The diary entry was written on Dec. 16, 1998, the first day of a four-day bombing campaign against Iraq — the first that Blair had ordered since becoming prime minister.
FRANCE
Le Pen daughter wins poll
Jean-Marie Le Pen’s youngest daughter Marine will take the helm of his anti-immigrant National Front (FN), ending the French far-right leader’s 38 years in charge of the party, following a vote late on Friday. A party official said that the 42-year-old FN vice president had beaten her rival, Bruno Gollnisch, 60, a staunch backer of the old leader, in the vote conducted among the grouping’s 24,000-odd members. Neither of the protagonists was prepared to comment immediately. An official announcement is expected at the end of the party’s congress today.
IRAN
Envoys tour atomic sites
Seven foreign diplomats yesterday were set to start a two-day tour of Iran’s atomic sites at the invitation of Tehran, in a bid to drum up support for its contentious nuclear program. In a blow to the effort, key powers Russia, China and the EU refused the invitation. The EU said it should be up to inspectors from the UN atomic agency to verify whether Iran’s program is entirely peaceful. The US was not invited. On the tour are envoys from Egypt, Cuba, Syria, Algeria, Venezuela, Oman and the Arab League. They were to visit the unfinished heavy water reactor near Arak yesterday and the uranium enrichment facility near Natanz later.
AUSTRIA
Crematorium to heat HQ
Undertakers in Vienna said they were planning to use a crematorium to help heat their new headquarters. Bestattung Wien spokesman Juergen Sild said cremation requires generating very high temperatures and that the idea, in times of environmental awareness, was to put the excess energy created to good use instead of letting it go to waste. Sild added on Friday that the headquarters, to be situated next to the crematorium and due to be completed next year, would also be warmed with gas.
HAITI
One dead after clash
A gun-battle broke out between police and protesters before dawn on Friday and a 30-year-old was killed, National Police spokesman Frantz Lerebours said. The clash began when 20 to 30 people set fire to tires and fired weapons on an avenue on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince at about 2am, according to Lerebours. Fourteen protesters were arrested, Lerebours said. The remnants of burned tires were seen in at least three different neighborhoods in the capital later in the day. Some people said the protests might have been in reaction to an investigation by the Organization of American States into the results of the election on Nov. 28 last year.
UNITED STATES
Gabor’s leg amputated
Zsa Zsa Gabor is said to be doing well hours after surgery to amputate her right leg — an operation that doctors said was necessary to save her life. Publicist John Blanchette said that Gabor’s blood pressure and heart rate were normal and she was resting comfortably. Blanchette said she’ll be in the hospital for another week or two. Doctors at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center said Friday’s surgery went well, but Gabor is in frail health so she is being watched carefully. Gabor had an infection in her leg for several months and was hospitalized on Jan. 2 after efforts to save her leg with antibiotics failed.
UNITED STATES
Slaves’ child dies at 113
A Louisiana woman who is believed to have been the oldest living black American in the US and one of the last children of slaves has died. The Caddo Parish Coroner’s Office confirms that Mississippi Winn died on Friday afternoon at age 113 at a nursing home in Shreveport. Robert Young of the Gerontology Research Group said Winn was one of two known people in the US whose parents were almost certainly born into slavery because documents show they were born before the end of the Civil War, though her great-niece Mary Hollins said Winn never acknowledged that.
UNITED STATES
I was a baby addict: mom
“Octomom” Nadya Suleman was addicted to having children when she gave birth to octuplets in 2009 and called herself “stupid” for allowing herself to get into huge debt, she told The Oprah Winfrey Show in an episode that aired on Friday. Suleman, who has been plagued with money problems and threatened with eviction from her Southern California home, appeared on Winfrey’s show for a financial intervention from money guru Suze Orman. Suleman said she felt a “hole” after six kids and wanted more, but that after 14 kids the hole was still there. Orman heatedly urged Suleman to give up private school and excessive gifts for her children, and a personal trainer and manicures for herself.
UNITED STATES
Pilot loses gun at airport
A JetBlue pilot lost his government-issued handgun after a passenger mistakenly picked up his carry-on luggage, authorities said on Friday. The pilot was waiting for his Pittsburgh-bound flight at JFK Airport on Thursday morning when a passenger who was traveling with children mistakenly picked up his backpack along with her family’s bags, an official familiar with the incident said. The passenger boarded a flight to West Palm Beach, Florida. When she realized one of the bags was not hers, she notified a flight attendant, and the bag was returned, the official said. The pilot was certified to carry a weapon as part of the Federal Flight Deck Officer program.
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