INDIA
Talks held with Pakistan
India and Pakistan have agreed to “carry forward” talks aimed at resuming the full-fledged peace dialogue between the arch rivals that was suspended in the wake of the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao and her Pakistan counterpart Salman Bashir held talks late on Sunday in the Bhutanese capital Thimphu — the first high-level meeting between the nuclear-armed neighbors since July. The meeting failed to produce a date for an expected visit to India this year by Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi.
CHINA
Divorces outpace marriages
Nearly 2 million couples divorced last year — far more than the number who got married in the world’s most populous nation, state media reported. A total of 1.96 million couples applied for divorce last year and only 1.2 million tied the knot, the Legal Evening News quoted the civil affairs ministry as saying. The country’s divorce rate has risen gradually at an average of 7.65 percent a year since 2003 when the law regulating marriage was amended, simplifying both marriage and divorce procedures, the report published late on Sunday said.
SOUTH KOREA
N Koreans sail south
Thirty-one North Koreans crossed the tense Yellow Sea border by boat and arrived in the South, but they have not so far expressed any wish to defect, the country’s Ministry of Defense said yesterday. A spokesman, confirming a report in Dong-A Ilbo newspaper, said the country’s navy on Saturday detained the five-tonne boat about 2.5km south of the disputed border. Officials were interrogating the group, the spokesman said. The 11 men and 20 women arrived off the island in thick fog and were towed to the western port city of Incheon, Yonhap news agency quoted a military official as saying. “Given the circumstances so far, they might have been drifting after setting the wrong coordinates or losing power on their boat,” another official was quoted as saying.
MYANMAR
Report supports sanctions
The party of the country’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi yesterday recommended maintaining Western sanctions on the country, saying the embargoes affected the military regime and not the broader population. The announcement by the National League for Democracy (NLD), the government’s biggest opposition force, will be a blow to both the junta and Western investors keen to tap the isolated country’s vast natural resources. “We came to find that the sanctions affect only the leaders of the ruling regime and their close business associates, not the majority of the people,” NLD vice-chairman Tin Oo said.
SOUTH KOREA
Remittances to North grow
North Koreans who have fled to the capitalist country send an estimated US$10 million a year to families left behind in the impoverished communist state, a report said yesterday. The country’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper, citing Seoul officials and refugees, said the money has become a major part of the North’s underground economy in border areas. “With the number of North Korean defectors rapidly rising and diversified methods of money remittance, the total amount sent back is growing,” Chosun quoted a senior official as saying. The remittances are arranged by brokers in China and in the North, who use their own bank accounts and cash reserves to transfer money with a commission of 30 percent, Chosun said.
UNITED STATES
Lee offers reward for photo
Actor Jason Lee is offering a US$25,000 reward for the return of a stolen photograph of the late Dennis Hopper. Lee’s black-and-white Polaroid of the iconic Easy Rider actor and director was on display as part of an exhibit in Los Angeles when it was swiped on Saturday night. Lee’s publicist, Nancy Iannios, said on Sunday that an unidentified person grabbed the photo from the wall and ran out the front door of the gallery in the Highland Park neighborhood. Iannios said the My Name is Earl star has a sentimental attachment to the picture and will pay US$25,000 for its safe return, no questions asked.
CUBA
End to hunger strike urged
A leader of the Ladies in White opposition group said she would urge a colleague to end a 10-day-old hunger strike she launched to demand freedom for her jailed husband. Laura Pollan said the protest could be counterproductive in efforts to gain freedom for the last political prisoners from a 2003 crackdown on dissent. She said she planned to travel to the home of Alejandrina Garcia, near the central city of Matanzas, to deliver the message personally. The Cuban government on Friday released one of the prisoners and the Catholic Church announced that another release was imminent.
UNITED STATES
Two arrested in shooting
Two men have been arrested and charged in a shooting at an Ohio fraternity house that killed one student and injured 11 people at a party just north of the Youngstown State University campus. Youngstown police chief Jimmy Hughes said each man was charged with aggravated murder, shooting into a house and 11 counts of felonious assault. He said the men were in their early 20s and from the Youngstown area, but he withheld their names pending further investigation. Hughes said earlier that the suspected gunmen were involved in a dispute at a party, left, then returned and began firing outside the crowded house early on Sunday. Coroners identified the dead victim as 25-year-old Youngstown State University senior Jamail Johnson. Johnson was shot once in the back of the head and several times in the lower body, investigator Rick Jamrozik said.
CHILE
Rapa Nui family evicted
Police on Sunday evicted 17 indigenous protesters from an Easter Island hotel that they have occupied for six months in a property rights battle that has drawn international interest. The squatters, members of a native family, claim that the Hangaroa Eco Village and Spa is being built on land that was illegally taken from them and sold to the Schiess family, one of Chile’s most powerful clans. Land disputes turned violent in December, shaking the celebrated vacation destination, which attracts 50,000 tourists each year. The Polynesian island, located 3,500km from the South American mainland, is home to just 4,000 mostly Rapa Nui inhabitants and is famous for its iconic, mystery-shrouded stone face statues, known as moais.
BRAZIL
Fire destroys Samba City
A large fire in Rio de Janeiro has destroyed Samba City, a part of metropolis where costumes and floats for the city’s famed carnival are being made, media reports said yesterday. The Globo TV network reported that the fire was affecting the samba school, showing images of the disaster. Firefighters were trying to contain the large blaze in the center for the practice of samba, in the port area of the country’s second-largest city, Globo said.
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
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
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