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.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not