PHILIPPINES
Marcos victims to be repaid
Lawyers for victims of human rights violations under former dictator Ferdinand Marcos say more than 7,500 people will receive compensation starting next week, 25 years after his ouster in a “people power” revolt. It will be the first financial compensation since the lawsuits were filed in 1986. American lawyer Robert Swift said yesterday that each plaintiff would get the equivalent of US$1,000. The money will come from a US$7.5 million settlement involving Marcos’ assets in Texas and Colorado. Swift says more money may be forthcoming after a Hawaiin court’s judgment last month holding Marcos’ widow Imelda and their son Ferdinand Marcos Jr in contempt and ordering them to pay the victims US$353.6 million.
MALAYSIA
New court opens
Kuala Lumpur has launched special courts to tackle an overload of graft cases as part of the government’s fight against perceptions that it allows corruption to flourish. Complaints about bribery, fraud and murky deals in the government helped the opposition make major inroads in 2008 national elections. The next polls are widely expected later this year. According to official data, at least 400 corruption trials are bogging down the judicial system, more than two-thirds of which involve government employees. A statement from the Prime Minister’s Department said about 150 cases were transferred this week to 18 new courts that should wrap up those cases within a year. Prosecutor Abdul Majid Hamzah said yesterday this will “help in speedy disposal of corruption cases.”
SOUTH KOREA
Helicopter crashes, one dies
A coast guard helicopter has crashed off the southern coast, leaving one dead and four officers missing. Coast guard officer Bu Ji-hwan says the helicopter crashed west of the island of Jeju late on Wednesday. Coast guard and navy ships were searching yesterday for the four officers still missing. The body of Lee Yu-jin was recovered from the ocean. The coast guard says the helicopter had picked up Lee from a coast guard ship and was taking her to Jeju for medical care before it crashed. It’s not immediately known what caused the crash.
INDIA
Gang-rape trio freed
The Supreme Court took the unusual step on Wednesday of freeing three gang--rapists who had served just a third of their sentences after they worked out a financial settlement with their victim. A lower court had sentenced the rapists to 10 years in prison — the minimum for gang rape by law — for the crime, committed in 1997. But the men said that they had since agreed to pay the victim 50,000 rupees (US$1,100), the Press Trust of India reported. Lawyers for the trio, who appealed to be released after spending three-and-a-half years in prison, said they and the victim had all moved on with their lives, were happily married and “wanted to live peacefully.”
VIETNAM
Burned reporter’s wife held
Police investigating the death of a reporter who was doused with chemicals and set ablaze as he slept are holding his wife on a murder charge, reports said on Wednesday. Hoang Hung, 51, an investigative journalist with Nguoi Lao Dong newspaper, was attacked at the family home near Ho Chi Minh City on the night of Jan. 19. He died more than a week later in hospital.
GERMANY
Minister’s title revoked
Bayreuth University has revoked the doctoral title of Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg after he acknowledged errors in his thesis amid allegations he plagiarized parts of the work. University president Ruediger Bormann said Guttenberg could no longer use his academic title of “Dr.” The minister had asked for the title to be revoked in an effort to remain in office despite calls from the opposition for his removal. Chancellor Angela Merkel has backed Guttenberg despite accusations he copied wide tracts of his 475-page dissertation without sufficiently crediting the sources. Guttenberg on Wednesday defended his decision to remain in office to lawmakers during two different parliamentary sessions.
UNITED KINGDOM
Le Carre donates archive
Spy novelist John le Carre said yesterday he was giving an archive of his books, personal papers and photographs to Oxford University’s renowned Bodleian Library. The archive includes drafts and manuscripts of le Carre’s best known novels, including Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Tailor of Panama and The Constant Gardener.”About 85 archive boxes have been delivered to the library, and more papers, correspondence and documents will follow soon. Le Carre, the pen name of David Cornwell, said he was delighted to hand over his works. “Oxford was [George] Smiley’s [the name of the spy master in his novels] spiritual home, as it is mine,” he said. “And while I have the greatest respect for American universities, the Bodleian is where I shall most happily rest.” Smiley is said to have been inspired by an official at Lincoln College at Oxford.
POLAND
Hundreds froze to death
Police said on Wednesday that 200 people had frozen to death this winter. Most victims were either homeless or under the influence of alcohol. The country has faced a severe cold spell in recent days, with temperatures dropping to minus 15oC in Warsaw at night and to minus 20oC in the northeast city of Bialystok. Police said on their Web site that 29 people had died from the cold this month alone, raising the total to 200 since the first cold spell struck in November.
YEMEN
Scores of Somalis drown
Forty-nine Somali migrants drowned when their boat capsized during heavy winds in the Gulf of Aden off the southern coast, the interior ministry said yesterday. The group “drowned off the coast of Bir Ali in the south ... when their boat capsized four nautical miles [7.4km] offshore” during a storm on Tuesday, a ministry statement said. A number of those on board managed to swim to shore, where they informed local authorities of the accident, it said, without indicating how many survived.
UNITED KINGDOM
Executives jailed for fraud
Two former directors of the bridge-building firm Mabey & Johnson have been jailed for making payments to former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s regime in breach of UN sanctions. The Serious Fraud Office said former managing director Richard Charles Edward Forsyth, 63, and former sales director David Mabey, 49, provided kickbacks to the Iraqi government in 2001 and 2001. London’s Southwark Crown Court ruled that the pair had illegally inflated the contract price for the supply of steel bridges to Iraq under the UN’s oil-for-food program. Forsyth and Mabey were sentenced on Wednesday to 21 months and eight months respectively.
UNITED STATES
Official loses job over tweet
An Indiana deputy attorney general “is no longer employed” by the state after Mother Jones magazine reported he tweeted that police should to use live ammunition against Wisconsin labor protesters, the attorney general’s office said on Wednesday. The magazine reported on Wednesday that Jeffrey Cox responded “Use live ammunition” to a Saturday night posting on its Twitter account that said riot police could sweep protesters out of the Wisconsin capitol, where thousands have been protesting a bill that would strip public employees of collective bargaining rights. Cox also referred to the protesters as “thugs physically threatening legally-elected state legislators & governor” and said: “You’re damn right I advocate deadly force,” according to the magazine. He later told an Indianapolis TV station the comments were intended to be satirical.
BRAZIL
Firefighters find alligator
Firefighters say they have removed a 1.5m-long alligator that was hiding behind a couch after floodwaters washed it into a home in Parauapebas city. Fire department Captain Luiz Claudio Farias said when the floodwaters receded on Tuesday, a woman saw her three-year-old son petting something behind the couch. He says “she snatched the boy away and called” firefighters after realizing it was an alligator. The alligator was taken to an environmentally protected area near the city and released into a river.
UNITED STATES
Beauty queen loses appeal
A Texas beauty queen who accused pageant organizers of harassing her about her weight lost an appeal to a judge who denied her efforts to temporarily forbid a new Miss San Antonio from taking her place. Attorneys for Domonique Ramirez say the 17-year-old isn’t giving up and will now take her case to a Texas jury. However, pageant organizers have already crowned Ashley Dixon as Miss San Antonio — placing the tiara on her while the former runner-up sat in the gallery of the courtroom. State District Judge Cathleen Stryker set a trial for next month after denying a motion for a temporary injunction following a two-day hearing, in which Ramirez testified she was ordered to lose 6kg. Ramirez is 1.75m and weighs 58kg.
UNITED STATES
Honor killer faces prison
An Iraqi immigrant convicted of second-degree murder for running over his daughter because she became too Westernized now faces between 18 and 46 years in prison. A jury on Wednesday found that four aggravating factors were true in the case against Faleh Hassan Almaleki, setting the range of sentences if a judge finds no mitigating factors. The jury also found the 50-year-old guilty of aggravated assault for running over the mother of his daughter’s boyfriend and two counts of leaving the scene of an accident. Prosecutors say Almaleki ran over and killed Noor Almaleki and injured Amal Khalaf in October 2009. Sentencing is set for April 15.
UNITED STATES
General cleared of misconduct
The US Marine general considered the leading candidate to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was investigated and cleared of misconduct involving a young aide, the results of a Pentagon inquiry released on Wednesday showed. An anonymous accuser claimed General James Cartwright had acted inappropriately during a 2009 overseas trip on which the female aide traveled as a military assistant.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing