BANGLADESH
Ferry sinking kills 15
A ferry carrying more than 100 people capsized yesterday after colliding with another vessel and at least 15 people were killed, police said. The death toll was expected to rise with some passengers believed trapped inside the ferry and dozens missing, rescuers said. “Divers are trying to retrieve more bodies from the sunken ferry,” senior police official Zahurul Islam Khan said. The ferry, M.L. Bipasha, sank after it collided with a cargo vessel on the Meghna River at Rajapur, 130km northeast of Dhaka.
INDIA
Corruption a problem: PM
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said yesterday that corruption had become a cause of serious public discontent, as he pledged to introduce an anti-graft bill in parliament soon. His government earlier this month accepted hunger-striker Anna Hazare’s demand to include activists on a panel drafting the anti-graft bill, which could ensure prosecutions of ministers and bureaucrats. Singh said the bill would be introduced in the next session of parliament, which starts in July.
INDIA
Mystic’s health deteriorating
Doctors treating spiritual leader Sai Baba, one of the country’s most famous gurus, said yesterday his health was deteriorating fast as devotees gathered to pray for his recovery. Police in Sai Baba’s hometown of Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradesh erected crowd barriers to control worried followers who rushed to the hospital where he was being treated. Well-wishers have converged on Puttaparthi, many of them sleeping out in the open on pavements because of a lack of hotel rooms. A medical bulletin said the vital organs of the 85-year-old mystic were “showing very poor response to the treatment” since he was hospitalized last month with a heart condition, lung congestion and kidney failure.
CAMBODIA
Police, residents clash
Police yesterday clashed with protesters who have refused to make way for a Chinese-Cambodian housing project in the capital. Armed with riot shields, wooden sticks and batons, they tried to disperse about 100 people demonstrating in front of city hall against plans by authorities to evict 1,500 families from areas around Boeng Kak Lake. Tens of thousands of Cambodians are being ejected from farms or city homes to make way for development projects, many led by Chinese firms such as Inner Mongolia Erdos Hongjun Investment Corp, which is building a luxury housing estate next to Boeng Kak Lake in a joint venture with a local tycoon. A total of 2,752 families have already been driven from homes around Boeng Kak.
INDONESIA
Six bomb suspects arrested
Police yesterday arrested six people suspected of being behind a series of recent parcel bombs in Jakarta, they said, as another device was found near a church in the morning. The men, held in anti-terror raids on two rented houses in east Jakarta, were believed to be connected to mysterious deliveries of bombs hidden in hollowed-out books last month, an unnamed police source said. The “book bombs” were sent to several addresses, including those of liberal Muslim figures and a counterterrorism official, but no one was killed. Another parcel bomb was found yesterday morning near a church in Serpong on the outskirts of Jakarta, local police chief Heribertus Ompusunggu said.
CANADA
Murder suspect arrested
Police on Wednesday announced an arrest in the killing of a Chinese student whose last moments were captured by a Webcam. Brian Dickson, 29, of Toronto, was arrested and charged with murder, Toronto police said in a statement. The victim, Liu Qian (柳乾), 23, had been chatting online with her boyfriend overseas when a man in his 20s with a muscular build and medium-length brown hair knocked at her door and asked to use her cellphone. Suddenly, a skirmish erupted. An assailant was seen through the lens of the Webcam struggling with Liu in her basement apartment near York University at about 1am on Friday last week, hours before her body was discovered.
FRANCE
Sarkozy behind Le Pen: poll
The leader of the far-right National Front (FN) party would qualify for the second round of the presidential elections at the expense of President Nicolas Sarkozy, a poll showed on Wednesday. The poll results suggest the opposition Socialists would be well-placed to win the runoff in May next year, as the presence of FN leader Marine Le Pen in a second round would likely trigger a massive vote for her opponent. The survey by pollsters Harris Interactive found that IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a former Socialist finance minister, would comfortably win the first round if he decides to contest the elections. Strauss-Kahn scored 30 percent approval, versus 21 percent for Le Pen, while Sarkozy came in third with 19 percent, the poll showed.
FRANCE
Minister sued for remarks
An anti-racism group sued the tough-talking Minister of the Interior Claude Gueant, a longtime adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy, on Wednesday over public remarks he has made about Muslims, and others vowed to follow suit. SOS Racisme said it was suing Gueant over several comments he made in interviews and notably for saying that the growth of the nation’s Muslim population since 1905 had posed problems.
RUSSIA
Immigration official sacked
Russia’s migration service has sacked its spokesman after he sparked an outcry by saying that the survival of the “white race” was at stake in immigration policies, media reported yesterday. “At stake is in principle the future of the white race,” Konstantin Poltoranin, the head of public relations at the Federal Migration Service told the BBC in an interview posted on the Web site of its Russian service. “In Russia, we feel this question as Russians are the titular people and we see that problems arise every day,” he said. “We need to make sure that the mixing of blood takes place in the right way,” Poltoranin added.
RUSSIA
Medvedev’s dance goes viral
Moving to the beat of 1990s pop hit American Boy, President Dmitry Medvedev’s stiff dance moves became an immediate viral hit on YouTube on Wednesday. Sporting a form-fitting silver jacket and open collar, Medvedev somewhat awkwardly wiggles his hips and kicks up his heels with other party guests in the half-minute clip posted late on Tuesday. “You dance like my father!” Twitter user Stacey Uliss wrote on Medvedev’s page, to which the tech-savvy, 45-year-old president promptly posted a good-natured response. “Age-wise that seems to be the case,” he tweeted, admitting the tune and his dance moves were dated. “We were partying at a meeting with [former] classmates a year ago. The dances/music are still those from the past.”
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of