PAKISTAN
Bombings kill five
A pair of bombings targeting police in Peshawar yesterday killed five people, including a senior police officer. In the most deadly attack, a suicide bomber struck a vehicle carrying Rasheed Khan, the deputy superintendent of police in southern Peshawar, killing him and three others, including his driver, one of his guards and a passer-by, police official Shafqat Malik said. Seven people were wounded in the attack, which took place on the outskirts of Peshawar, he said. Less than three hours later, a roadside bomb hit a police vehicle on patrol, killing one policeman and wounding three others, police official Fazle Wahid said. The bombing took place several kilometers away from the first attack.
JAPAN
Ozawa charged over scandal
Ruling party powerbroker Ichiro Ozawa was charged yesterday over a funding scandal, a court spokesman said, a widely expected judicial move that could widen a rift in the ruling party over whether he should leave the party. Ozawa’s indictment will give fresh ammunition to opposition parties who control parliament’s upper house and are refusing to join multiparty talks on tax reform to curb the country’s huge debt. They are instead trying to force Prime Minister Naoto Kan to either resign or call a snap election for the powerful lower chamber.
SRI LANKA
News offices set alight
Unidentified attackers in Colombo set ablaze the offices of an anti-establishment news Web site yesterday. The lankaenews.com premises were torched in a pre-dawn attack, but there were no reports of casualties, a police officer at the scene said. Yesterday’s attack appeared similar to the July burning of a private television station, Siyatha, in Colombo. In January 2009, another independent television station, Maharaja Television, was bombed by an unidentified group of people. A spokesman for President Mahinda Rajapakse’s office said he had ordered police to carry out a thorough investigation.
NEW ZEALAND
Jackson in stable condition
Lord of the Rings director Sir Peter Jackson is in stable condition in the intensive care unit of Wellington Hospital after surgery for a perforated ulcer. Publicist Melissa Booth said yesterday that Jackson was “doing well,” but would be in the hospital for at least a few more days. She said doctors expect Jackson to make a full recovery. He was admitted to Wellington Hospital on Wednesday after complaining of acute stomach pains.
BOLIVIA
Flood claims 34 lives
At least 34 people were killed when a river near Pampahuas burst its banks, sweeping away a passenger bus and a truck, authorities said on Sunday. Bodies have been washing up on the banks of the Mollepunku River since the incident late on Friday near the town, which is 700km southeast of La Paz, police said. The passenger bus had been carrying 39 people, and regional police commander Iver Marquez said the truck was carrying two people at the time of the accident, indicating the final death toll may rise. Firefighters were on the scene recovering bodies and locating any survivors, Marquez said.
VENEZUELA
Military arms depot explodes
A fire and a series of explosions tore through a military arms depot on Sunday, killing one person and leading authorities to evacuate thousands of people. About 10,000 residents fled their homes in areas up to several kilometers from the site as the burning ammunition produced powerful blasts, officials said. The cause of the pre-dawn fire was unclear. Hours after the initial explosions, faint booms could still be heard in the distance as clouds of white smoke rose from the area alongside hills in Maracay, 100km west of Caracas. Vice President Elias Jaua said state television that authorities were investigating — and suggested they weren’t ruling out sabotage.
IRAN
Porn site operators get death
The courts on Sunday sentenced two people to death for running porn sites, Prosecutor General Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said, according to the IRNA news agency. “Two administrators of porn sites have been sentenced to death in two different [court] branches and [the verdicts] have been sent to the supreme court for confirmation,” Dolatabadi said, without naming the two convicts. In December last year, Canada expressed concern about the reported death sentence handed down to an Iranian-born Canadian resident for allegedly designing an adult Web site.
ISRAEL
Activist jailed nine years
A court sentenced an Israeli-Arab human rights activist to nine years in prison on Sunday after convicting him last year of spying for the Lebanese organization Hezbollah. Amir Makhoul had confessed to the spying charge as part of a plea bargain at Haifa District Court, which added a further year’s suspended sentence to the nine years behind bars. Makhoul initially pleaded not guilty, but agreed to enter a new plea in exchange for reduced charges and to drop his previous complaints of maltreatment while under interrogation. In October last year, the three-judge panel at the Haifa court found Makhoul guilty of passing information to Hezbollah on the location of several secret installations in Israel and of passing information on various other matters to the group.
UNITED KINGDOM
Composer John Barry dies
Oscar-winning composer John Barry, who wrote the scores to Out of Africa, Dances With Wolves and numerous Bond films, has died at the age of 77, the BBC reported yesterday, citing relatives. John Barry Prendergast died of a heart attack, the broadcaster said.Barry won five Oscars for his work on Out of Africa, Dances With Wolves, The Lion in Winter and Born Free, for which he won best song and best music score.He also composed scores for a string of James Bond films, among them Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice.
‘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