PAKISTAN
Security for detainee raised
The government said on Monday it was taking steps to keep US consulate worker Raymond Davis, detained for shooting two Pakistanis, safe from harm. US officials have expressed fears about Davis’s safety as anti-US sentiment has flared in the wake of the shooting in Lahore last month. Surveillance cameras monitor the area where Davis has been locked in a cell isolated from other prisoners, prison sources said. A team of 36 unarmed guards, who officials say have been specially screened, are standing watch in shifts of eight. Outside the Kot Lakhpat jail in Lahore, about 75 police officers, a team of provincial rangers and vehicles packed with elite forces stood watch.
PAKISTAN
Libyan deployment deferred
Philippine Overseas Employment Administration chief Carlos Cao said yesterday the government has indefinitely deferred the deployment of workers to Libya, Bahrain and Yemen. In an emergency meeting, the officials also decided to prepare for a possible evacuation of Filipino workers, especially in regions of Libya like Benghazi, if the unrest there worsens. Foreign affairs department spokesman Ed Malaya says that diplomats have taken steps to locate and contact about 26,000 Filipino workers in Libya for possible evacuation.
MALAYSIA
Iranians nabbed for drugs
Police said yesterday they have dented a major drugs syndicate with the arrest of two Iranian women with more than 6.2kg of methamphetamine on Penang. Northern Penang state police chief Ayub Yaakob said the pair were arrested on Saturday at Penang International Airport after their suitcases were found containing drugs worth 1.55 million ringgit (US$511,000). “We became suspicious about the women as they had traveled to Malaysia three times in less than three months and they did not have any business dealings or any other reason to keep them coming back so frequently,” he said. “The two Iranian women, we believe, are part of one of the region’s biggest syndicates which is trying to use Malaysia as a transhipment point for its drug and it has been dealt a significant blow with this arrest.”
CHINA
Gambling leads to death
A man in his 30s has died after a three-day gaming binge at an Internet cafe outside Beijing, during which he did not sleep and barely ate, the Beijing Times reported yesterday. The man, who was not identified, slipped into a coma this week in the cafe and was rushed to a nearby clinic, where he died shortly after, the paper said. He had spent more than 10,000 yuan (US$1,500) over the past month on Internet gaming, and had barely moved from his computer for a three-day period, the report said. Police confiscated several computers as part of their investigation but have ruled out murder and thus far have not detained the operators of the cafe.
THAILAND
Red Shirt leader arrested
The elderly leader of a faction of the anti-government “Red Shirt” protest movement was arrested yesterday and charged with insulting the monarchy, police said. Surachai Damwattananusorn, 69, was picked up at his home in Bangkok on lese majeste charges related to a speech he made on Dec. 8 last year, police said. He was remanded in custody for 12 days. Meanwhile, a court granted bail for seven Red Shirt leaders detained on terrorism charges after mass protests and riots ended in May last year.
GEORGIA
Prisoners exchanged
The government said on Monday it had exchanged prisoners with South Ossetia, the breakaway region over which it fought a war with Russia three years ago. Pro-Western Tbilisi and Russian-backed South Ossetia each accuse the other of holding people illegally since the Aug. 2008 conflict, when Russia crushed a Georgian military assault on the rebel region after months of Russian baiting. “We have exchanged six Ossetians and one Russian for seven Georgians,” Georgian interior ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said. He said Tbilisi released people arrested on various charges, including drug trafficking and counterfeiting, while South Ossetia freed Georgians charged with illegally crossing the border that separates South Ossetia from the rest of Georgia.
LIBYA
Chinese workers flee
More than 1,000 Chinese construction workers in the country were forced to flee after gun-wielding robbers stormed their compound, stealing computers and luggage, the company and state media said yesterday. Beijing has warned its citizens not to visit the North African country and urged Chinese companies to take precautions as protesters overran several Libyan cities, threatening leader Muammar Qaddafi’s 41-year grip on power. The looters raided Huafeng Company’s compound in the eastern city of Ajdabiyah on Sunday night, the Beijing News said, citing the Chinese embassy in Tripoli and a friend of one of the employees. No one was injured in the attack, the report said. The workers, clutching their passports, plane tickets, food and water, are walking to Tripoli, “several hundred kilometers” away, where they hope to catch a plane to China, the report said.
MALI
Stadium stampede kills 36
A stampede in a stadium at the end of a sermon by a renowned imam killed at least 36 people on Monday night, an official at the interior and civil protection ministry said. The stampede occurred as the crowd swarmed to get close to imam Osman Madani Haidara as he delivered blessings on a Muslim holiday in the packed 25,000-seat Modibo Keita stadium in the capital Bamako. The majority of the victims were women who waited in the front of the crowd hoping to be touched by the religious leader and receive healing and protection, a source said.
GERMANY
Zu Googleberg scraps degree
The defense minister, embroiled in a plagiarism scandal, has asked for his doctorate to be scrapped and admitted “serious errors” in his thesis, the University of Bayreuth said on Monday. The aristocratic Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg had temporarily given up his doctorate title while his alma mater looked into the claims that he copied several passages of his 2006 dissertation. In a letter sent late on Monday, the minister said a close inspection of his thesis showed “serious errors ... which are not compatible with scientific work,” university spokesman Frank Schmalzle said. Internet sleuths set up a collaborative Web site, or Wiki, to comb through the 475 pages of zu Guttenberg’s work, concluding there was evidence of unattributed copying on 270 of them. When the 14 pages of content and 65 pages of footnotes are taken into account, this amounts to more than two-thirds of the dissertation. The suave and popular 39-year-old, dubbed “Baron Cut-And-Paste” and “Zu Googleberg” by a gleeful media, acknowledged on Friday that there were “mistakes” in his thesis, but denied plagiarism.
UNITED STATES
Protesters promote pizza
Solidarity, as Middle Eastern potentates are quickly discovering, is a powerful thing. And it can take some rather unusual forms. One night last week, Ian’s Pizza in Madison, Wisconsin, received an order from some hungry protesters at the state capitol — where the Republican government is attempting to pass a bill that, among a range of harsh budget cuts, proposes to remove the collective bargaining rights of about 300,000 workers — asking if they had any leftovers. They did, and, even though it was 3:30am, obliged. The next day they took a couple of calls from people who had heard about their gesture and wanted to order more pizzas for the protesters, who number in the tens of thousands, and have been demonstrating for nearly a week. By 5pm on Saturday, after giving away 1,057 free slices at their restaurant and delivering more than 300 pizzas to the capitol, Ian’s had to suspend normal business. On Sunday it all began again. Calls were coming in not just from the States (38 of the 50, at last count), but from all over the globe: Canada, Denmark, Finland, Australia, Germany, China, the UK, the Netherlands, South Korea, Turkey and Egypt. Take on Mubarak and win, apparently, and you can take on the world.
UNITED STATES
Daughter of Malcolm X held
The daughter of slain civil rights leader Malcolm X was being held in a North Carolina jail and could be extradited to New York to face charges on several outstanding warrants, authorities said on Monday. Malikah Shabazz was arrested on Friday night after authorities responded to a call to a Mars Hill home, said Chief Deputy Michael Garrison of the Madison County Sheriff’s Office. Investigators found that the 45-year-old had several outstanding warrants for grand larceny, forgery and identity theft from Queens, New York. Her lawyer said she had not received word that she was wanted and had recently moved to the mountains of North Carolina with her 13-year-old daughter to find a peaceful place to live. Authorities came to the house on Friday night as social workers investigated a call that a child was not attending school, he said, noting that Shabazz’s daughter is home-schooled.
UNITED STATES
Child rapist sentenced
A woman who videotaped herself and her husband raping a four-year-old girl and posted it on the Internet has been sentenced to 26 years to life in prison. The Seattle Times reported that Hollie Beston, of Burien, was sentenced on Friday by King County Superior Court Judge Mariane Spearman. Beston had pleaded guilty in December to first-degree child rape, first-degree child molestation, sexual exploitation of a minor and dealing in child pornography. Her estranged husband, Brian Beston, of Kent, pleaded guilty to the same charges and was sentenced in June to 26 years to life in prison.
UNITED STATES
Bus crash kills one
A bus carrying 22 members of a South Korean church home from a weekend retreat in California slid off a mountain highway after colliding with another vehicle, killing one person, officials said. The bus slid 15m down a mountainside after hitting a power pole about 113km east of Los Angeles, California Highway Patrol Officer Mario Lopez said. Daniel Lee, a deacon at the Pasadena-based Light of Love Mission Church, said most participants were school-aged, adding normally he would have been the bus driver, but something came up and a professional bus driver had volunteered to replace him.
‘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