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.
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