SOUTH KOREA
Soldiers stripped of bullets
North Korea has been collecting ammunition from its soldiers to pre-empt possible revolt amid growing animosity toward Kim Jong-il’s regime, Free North Korea Radio reported. The move began on Feb. 18, the radio station reported on its Web site, citing a source it declined to identify. The station is run by North Korean defectors in Seoul who claim to be in contact with people in the North.
AFGHANISTAN
Bomb kills nine civilians
A roadside bomb struck a civilian vehicle in the east of the country yesterday killing nine civilians, including women and children, a provincial deputy police chief said. The civilians were driving into Khost City, capital of Khost Province, when their van was hit by the blast, Mohammad Yaqoub Mandozai said. “Three women, four children and two men were killed by the roadside bomb explosion. They were all civilians,” Mandozai said.
RUSSIA
Duma ratifies transit deal
The lower house of parliament ratified an agreement on Friday that allows the US to ferry troops and supplies across Russian territory for military operations in Afghanistan. The Kremlin-controlled State Duma voted 347 to 95 in favor of the 2009 deal, which has already been implemented pending ratification. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the Duma that there have been 780 US flights over Russia — carrying 115,000 US troops and more than 19,000 tonnes of cargo to and from Afghanistan — since September 2009.
JAPAN
PM resignation mulled
A senior lawmaker in the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) suggested yesterday that the resignation of Prime Minister Naoto Kan was an option to gain the support of opposition parties in passing bills to implement a workable budget, Kyodo News agency reported. Kan, whose support ratings have dropped to about 20 percent, faces pressure from both inside and outside the party to quit or call a snap election and is struggling to enact a workable budget for this year and next year in a deeply divided parliament. “We need to prioritize the passage of the budget over the DPJ, Mr Kan and whatever,” Kyodo quoted supreme adviser for the DPJ Kozo Watanabe as saying. Rifts in Kan’s own party, which deepened after the party’s long-time powerbroker Ichiro Ozawa was indicted over funding scandals last month, have also distracted the government from dealing with policy problems, such as the country’s massive public debt.
CHINA
LinkedIn working again
Social networking site LinkedIn is once again accessible, after apparently being blocked by authorities following online calls for Middle East-style protests across the country. The unidentified organizers of the protests have urged citizens to rally today in cities across the country. Last weekend, an initial attempt to organize protests attracted only a handful of participants, but that still proved enough to unnerve the government.Beijing has responded by increasing Internet filtering, stepping up police presence in cities and detaining dissidents. LinkedIn was not accessible in China for a few days this week, but was working again yesterday. The California-based, company has said that it continues to monitor the situation.
UNITED KINGDOM
Turing’s archive preserved
Papers relating to codebreaker and computer pioneer Alan Turing will go to a local museum after the National Heritage Memorial Fund stepped in to help buy them for the nation. The public-backed fund said on Friday it had donated more than £200,000 (US$320,000) to a campaign to stop the notes and scientific papers from going to a private buyer. The documents were put up for auction by Christie’s in November, but did not sell. The papers will go to the Bletchley Park Museum northwest of London, which commemorates the famous World War II codebreaking center. One of the founders of modern computing, Turing worked at Bletchley Park and helped crack Nazi Germany’s secret codes by creating the “Turing bombe,” a forerunner of modern computers.
UNITED KINGDOM
Fox enjoys high life
A death-defying fox clambered up the nation’s tallest skyscraper and lived the high life on the 72nd floor of the tower in central London for nearly two weeks, officials said on Friday. The intrepid animal climbed to the top of the Shard, which is more than 288m high and still under construction, where it enjoyed panoramic views over the capital and lived off builders’ scraps. The fox, dubbed “Romeo” by his rescuers, was caught by a local authority pest control team on Feb. 17 and taken to an animal rescue center on the outskirts of London, officials from Southwark Council said. After a medical check-up, he was found to be unhurt and was released back into the neighborhood surrounding the tower.
FRANCE
Ecstasy-like drug seized
Customs has smashed a ring smuggling the new 4-MEC synthetic drug and seized 52kg of the ecstasy-like stimulant sent from China, officials said on Friday. “This is the first time this kind of product has been seized in France,” customs spokesman David Cugnetti told journalists in the eastern city of Lyon of the drug that is so new it is not yet illegal. The drug, full name 4-Methylethcathinone, was to be prepared in France and sold on to eastern Europe and “English-speaking” countries for 10 euros a gram, Cugnetti said. He said there were as yet no reports of the amphetamine being consumed in French night clubs.
UNITED KINGDOM
Student jailed for terror
A London court has sentenced a law student who posted Islamic terrorist propaganda on the Internet to five years in jail. Judge David Paget said on Friday Mohammed Gul was “thoroughly radicalized” and that the sentence must serve as a deterrent to others. The 23-year-old was found guilty of five counts of distributing terrorist publications. The charges related to 30 videos posted online where Gul added jihadi songs to clips from al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Iraqi media sites.
UNITED STATES
Bush, Assange not meeting
Former president George W. Bush on Friday canceled a scheduled appearance at a business leaders’ conference in Denver, Colorado, after learning that organizers also invited WikiLeaks frontman Julian Assange. WikiLeaks and Assange, who is under house arrest in Britain while he fights extradition to Sweden in a sexual misconduct case, have drawn the ire of US officials by leaking hundreds of thousands of secret government documents. Assange also will not attend the summit, according to Geoffrey Robertson, a British lawyer helping represent him in his extradition battle.
UNITED KINGDOM
BBC ends Cuba service
The BBC says it has ended its Spanish-language radio broadcasts for Cuba, 73 years after they first went on air. The radio service had to be closed because it reached a very small audience, making it difficult to justify continuing broadcasting amid a 16 percent cut in government funding for the broadcaster’s World Service budget.
PANAMA
Indians protest mining law
Hundreds of Indians blocked stretches of the Pan-American highway on Friday for a second consecutive day, hoping to get President Ricardo Martinelli to overturn a new mining law. Protesters burned tires and used tree trunks to halt traffic on the highway, which links Panama City with Costa Rica, a journalist reported. Many of the protesters carried machetes and bows and arrows, and some donned face paint or wore ski masks. Marches and demonstrations have been going on for weeks even though the Martinelli administration on Tuesday issued a decree banning mining in Indian territory. Lawmakers on Feb. 10 approved legislation to attract foreign investment to its mining industry. Environmentalists and indigenous groups fear changes to the mining code would spoil the pristine jungle and force Indian communities to relocate.
CANADA
Protesters rally against judge
Dozens of protesters rallied against a Manitoba judge who cited a sexual assault victim’s clothing when he chose not to sentence the defendant to prison. Protesters chanted outside the law courts against comments made by Justice Robert Dewar, who cited the victim’s dress and the way she acted as reasons for giving a man a conditional sentence with no prison time. Some protesters said on Friday that Dewar should be removed from the bench. Lorraine Parrington, who coordinates the sexual assault crisis program at a community health center in Winnipeg, says the judge’s remarks demonstrate a need for more education about how women should be treated in sexual assault cases.
MEXICO
Botox not for drug ‘queen’
Prosecutors say that doses of the cosmetic treatment Botox allegedly allowed illegally into a Mexico City prison were not used on jailed drug cartel suspect Sandra Avila Beltran, better known as the “Queen of the Pacific.” Mexico City chief prosecutor Miguel Mancera says the prison’s former warden has acknowledged using Botox. However, it is not clear if the alleged illicit shipment of Botox was the same one supplied to the warden. Inmates are not allowed to receive such treatments behind bars, but Mancera said on Friday that Avila Beltran acknowledged talking to a doctor in the prison about Botox.
UNITED STATES
Voodoo ritual causes fire
Candles ringing a bed in a voodoo ceremony that included sex ignited sheets and clothing strewn nearby and caused a fatal apartment fire last weekend, a city official said on Friday. The blaze started on Sunday when a woman visited a Brooklyn apartment and paid a man to perform a ceremony that would bring her good luck, fire marshals said. The man was known in the neighborhood as a priest, and the two were either having sex, or had had sex when the fire started from the candles on the floor, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing. The occupants fled as the flames spread. It took nearly 200 firefighters to bring the blaze under control. A 64-year-old resident was found dead.
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
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema