PAKISTAN
‘Curry cannibals’ arrested
Police have arrested two men for allegedly digging up a newly buried corpse and eating its flesh in a curry. The two brothers are said to have cut the legs from the body of a 24-year-old woman and cooked the flesh in a steel pot. Some of the gruesome dish had already been eaten when police raided the brothers’ home in a remote part of Punjab Province. A senior police officer, Malik Abdul Rehman, said the brothers had been eating corpses for at least a year, but some local media reports alleged that they had been human flesh eaters for a decade. Rehman said that the brothers, Muhammad Arif, 40, and Farman Ali, 37, seemed to have taken up cannibalism as an act of “revenge” after their mother died and their wives left them. The investigation that led to their arrest was launched after the family of a 24-year-old cancer victim, Saira Parveen, visited her tomb on Sunday, a day after her funeral, to find the grave dug up and her body missing.
MALAYSIA
Video fake: Anwar’s family
The family of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim said a videotape allegedly showing him having sex with a woman is a fake aimed at undermining his alliance ahead of a crucial state election. The video clip leaked on Monday on the Internet is part of a longer video that was first shown to journalists last month by two former ruling coalition politicians and a businessman. Anwar’s wife, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, said her family watched the clip and found the body and physique of the man in the video “extremely different” from Anwar. She said yesterday that the video was aimed at smearing her husband ahead of an April 16 election in the state of Sarawak.
VIETNAM
Police probe quarry deaths
Police are investigating suspected safety violations by the owners of a quarry where 18 people died in a massive rockslide last week, the Vietnam News reported yesterday. At the time, police said continuous rain might have caused the boulders to tumble at Len Co quarry in Nghe An Province on Friday. However, initial investigations found alleged negligence by the quarry’s owners, Chin Men Co Ltd, and company boss Phan Cong Chin, 47, the state media said. “Despite being warned by local authorities several times, he did not abide by labor safety regulations,” Thai Van Binh, deputy police chief of the province’s Yen Thanh District, was quoted as saying.
MALAYSIA
Illegal immigrants escape
More than 100 illegal immigrants have fled a detention camp after burning down an accommodation block, a senior security official said yesterday. Rusli Mokhtar, deputy commandant of the Lenggeng immigration depot, said the breakout happened late on Monday. “Some 109 illegal immigrants — mainly from Myanmar and Thailand — set fire to a detention block and escaped last night,” he said. Nineteen of the illegal immigrants had been recaptured and police are looking for the others, he added.
AUSTRALIA
Chinese top visitor numbers
Chinese travelers accounted for the largest group of visitors to the country for the first time in February, the statistics bureau said yesterday, with the Lunar New Year holidays and students driving the surge. About 77,000 Chinese visited in February, beating New Zealand, Britain and the US for the first time with a 30 percent jump compared with a year ago. The Tourism and Transport Forum said there were almost 30,000 more visitors in January and February.
DR CONGO
Plane with UN staff crashes
A small passenger plane carrying UN staff members crashed on Monday and broke into pieces, killing at least 10 people aboard, UN officials said. A UN peacekeeping source speaking on condition of anonymity in New York said that the death toll could rise. He said the plane was carrying an assortment of UN staff, including peacekeepers. The cause of the crash was not immediately known. The UN mission in the country, known as MONUSCO, includes more than 19,000 uniformed peacekeeping troops.
UNITED KINGDOM
Man chopped up girlfriends
A British man was found guilty on Monday of murdering two ex-girlfriends, including an American model, and dumping their dismembered bodies in canals in London and the Netherlands. Sweeney is already serving four life sentences for the attempted murder of another former girlfriend in 1994. Halstead, 33, was killed in 1990. Pieces of her body were thrown into a canal in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, although her head and hands are still missing. Her remains were identified in 2008 through a DNA test. The body parts of Fields, a 31-year-old sex worker and mother-of-three, were found in six bags floating in the Regent’s Canal in north London in February 2001. Her head, hands and feet have never been found.
BELGIUM
Molester can’t be charged
A Belgian Catholic bishop who resigned last year after admitting he sexually abused a boy in the 1980s cannot be prosecuted because the offense took place too long ago, the prosecutor said on Monday. Roger Vangheluwe quit in April last year after confessing he had sexually abused a boy when was bishop of Bruges. Vangheluwe was the highest ranking member of the church in the country to be caught up in the scandal. “In my research into the sexual abuse by Mr Vangheluwe I have not encountered any facts that were not expired under the statute of limitations,” Bruges’ prosecutor Jean-Marie Berkvens said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Kenyans to testify on torture
Five Kenyans accusing the government of torture during an uprising against the former colonial power more than 50 years ago will give evidence to the High Court today, their lawyers said. The three men and two women say they suffered castration, sexual abuse and severe beatings in detention camps administered by the government and now want an apology and financial compensation. Historians estimate as many as 150,000 suspected members of the Mau Mau, a resistance movement launched by Kenyan tribes, were detained without trial between 1952 and 1960 and placed in British-administrated camps.
RUSSIA
Moscow wants US money
Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said on Monday he was dissatisfied with the level of US investment in his country and said that Moscow is making strides in combating corruption and enforcing the rule of law. Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Ivanov said his government wants to improve economic ties with the US. “American investments in Russia represent 2.8 percent of the total, with US$7.3 billion. Sweden invests more in Russia,” he said. “We are not satisfied — we want to develop the cooperation in space, in information technologies, in nuclear technologies.”
UNITED STATES
Gauguin painting attacked
A woman accused of pounding on a painting by Paul Gauguin and trying to rip it from a wall at the National Gallery of Art told police the post-Impressionist artist was evil and the painting should be burned, court documents show. Susan Burns, 53, who lives in suburban Virginia, has been charged with attempted second-degree theft and destruction of property after the attack on Friday. The Gauguin painting, Two Tahitian Women, valued at an estimated US$80 million, was not damaged and was to go back on view yesterday, the National Gallery said in a statement. The painting depicts two women standing next to each other, one with both breasts exposed and the other with one breast showing. According to charging documents, an investigator told Burns her rights and asked why she had tried to remove the painting. “I feel that Gauguin is evil. He has nudity and is bad for the children. He has two women in the painting and it’s very homosexual. I was trying to remove it. I think it should be burned,” according to the documents. Burns also said: “I am from the American CIA and I have a radio in my head. I am going to kill you.”
? UNITED STATES
Strip searches weighed
The Supreme Court said on Monday that it would decide whether a jail policy of strip searching every individual arrested for any minor offense violated constitutional privacy rights. The high court agreed to hear an appeal by Albert Florence, who was strip searched twice at two different New Jersey jails over a six-day period after his arrest on a warrant for a traffic fine he had already paid. He said in his lawsuit that the conduct at the two jails violated his constitutional rights.
MEXICO
Shootout kills three
A soldier and two gunmen were killed in a shootout on Monday when troops surprised a gang of criminals in the act of torching a shopping center in the Pacific seaside resort of Acapulco, officials said. As troops arrived at the site in the early morning hours, a clash “lasted at least two hours,” during which “two attackers and one soldier died,” a statement from Guerrero state security said. Two police officers and another soldier were wounded in the clash, officials said.
UNITED STATES
Inspections of 737s ordered
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Monday it would order inspections of about 175 older Boeing 737s in the wake of a fuselage rupture that forced a Southwest Airlines 737 emergency landing. “The FAA will issue an emergency directive tomorrow that will require operators of specific early Boeing 737 models to conduct initial and repetitive electromagnetic inspections for fatigue damage,” the aviation watchdog said in a statement. The action initially will apply to a total of about 175 aircraft worldwide, 80 of which are US-registered aircraft, the FAA said.
UNITED STATES
Eagles become Internet stars
Cameras installed high in a tree in the state of Iowa have made an Internet sensation of a family of bald eagles, whose nest is streamed online live day and night. “Why viral, I’m not really sure,” Bob Anderson, director of the Raptor Resource Project, said of the success of the eagle Webcam. “The world just likes to hear something good instead of negative,” he said. “This is all positive, this makes people feel good.”
‘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
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
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