AUSTRALIA
Alcohol saved, man dies
A group leaving a bar in the southeastern town of Maude went to the effort of rescuing cases of alcohol that fell off the back of their pick-up after a night out, but left a 31-year-old man who had fallen off to die, police said on Sunday. A number of people were thrown from the back of the vehicle as it rounded a corner close to midnight on Saturday, but one man hit his head, sustaining fatal injuries. “It will be alleged that the driver and remaining passengers picked up a number of cartons of alcohol which had fallen from the vehicle, placed them back on the tray, and then drove off, leaving the critically injured man on the road,” police said. “He was located a short time later by the occupants of another vehicle, who contacted police and emergency services. Attempts to revive the man were unsuccessful, and he was pronounced deceased at the scene.”
NEW ZEALAND
Anzac Day commemorated
Tens of thousands of people turned out in wet weather yesterday for annual Anzac Day dawn services to honor the country’s war dead. Anzac Day is observed on the anniversary of the ill-fated landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) at Gallipoli in modern-day Turkey in World War I. More than 10,000 members of the corps died in the failed eight-month Gallipoli campaign. Turkish Ambassador Ali Yakital told the dawn service in Wellington he was filled with special emotion and a great mutual respect between the countries had grown out of the horrors of war.
INDONESIA
Australian sentenced in Bali
An Australian man was sentenced to 18 years in jail yesterday for smuggling drugs into Bali. Michael Sacatides, 43, was arrested last October as he passed through customs at Bali International Airport after landing on an AirAsia flight from Bangkok with 1.7kg of methamphetamine in his luggage. “He never admitted that the drug belonged to him,” chief judge Sigit Sutanto told Denpasar district court, referring to the reason why Sacatides was given two years higher than the prosecutors’ recommendation of 16 years.
THAILAND
Historian fears persecution
A historian who is one of the kingdom’s only academics to write openly and critically of the monarchy says he faces persecution and possible legal charges that could imprison him for 15 years. Somsak Jeamtheerasakul of Thammasat University said on Sunday his writing and speeches have never violated the lese majeste laws, which have been increasingly employed as apprehension grows over the succession to ailing 83-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Somsak told reporters there have been several acts of intimidation against him, including menacing men on motorcycles near his home, and an anonymous telephone call warning him to be careful.
CAMBODIA
Sam Rainsy sentenced again
A court yesterday slapped exiled opposition leader Sam Rainsy with yet another two-year jail term, this time for accusing the foreign minister of being a former Khmer Rouge member. Phnom Penh Municipal Court found the outspoken politician guilty in absentia of defamation and inciting discrimination for claiming in a 2008 speech that Hor Namhong once belonged to the Khmer Rouge. Sam Rainsy, who lives in France, now faces a total of 14 years in prison if he returns home following a string of convictions that opponents say are politically motivated.
NIGERIA
Two killed before vote
Two explosions at a hotel killed two people and wounded eight others in a northeastern town only days before the state’s gubernatorial election, police said yesterday. A third bomb went off in a motor park. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the blasts came as a radical Muslim sect vowed to keep up its fight. Police chief Mike Zuokumor said the blast went off on Sunday evening in Maiduguri, a town that has been wracked by violence related to a radical Islamic sect known as Boko Haram. The group had released a statement earlier on Sunday defending its deadly attacks on police and religious leaders. “All the people that we are killing, including ward heads, politicians, the police and the army, have erred because they are associating themselves with the government in its effort to arrest our Muslim brothers and sabotage Islam,” the group said in its statement.
ITALY
Would-be hijacker depressed
A Kazakh man who tried to hijack a Paris-Rome flight and divert the plane to Libya’s capital Tripoli suffers from depression and has no links to terrorism, the ANSA news agency reported in Rome yesterday. Police questioned Valery Tolmashev, 48, for five hours after he threatened a member of cabin crew with a small knife or nail file on the Alitalia flight at about 7:30pm on Sunday. The father-of-two lives in Paris and had never been to Italy, the news agency reported. He was being held at the Civitavecchia prison and is accused of hostage taking and attempting to hijack a plane. Reports say Tolmashev was an adviser to Kazakhstan’s delegation at the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in Paris, and had mental health problems.
SPAIN
ETA condemns shooting
The ETA said yesterday that an incident in France in which two of its members opened fire on a policeman was “against the will” of the armed Basque separatist group. It blamed the policies of the French and Spanish governments for the shooting earlier this month that left one policeman wounded. ETA said it “understands the concern that these events can provoke in Basque society,” in a statement issued in the separatist Basque newspaper Gara. “In that regard, we want to note that these clashes are contrary to the will of ETA.” On Jan. 10, ETA announced a permanent, verifiable ceasefire, but Madrid rejected the offer, demanding the group go further and disband entirely. ETA is blamed for the deaths of 829 people in its four--decade campaign of bombings and shootings to force the creation of an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwestern France. A car carrying the two ETA suspects sped through a police checkpoint in the Creuse region of France on April 9.
EGYPT
Doctor declares Mubarak fit
Cairo’s public prosecutor said on Sunday that a doctor had declared former president Hosni Mubarak well enough to be transferred to a prison hospital in Cairo pending questioning over corruption and murder allegations. “The public prosecutor has ordered the Interior Ministry to transfer former president Hosni Mubarak to Mazra’a hospital in Torah prison” once the hospital is ready to receive him, the prosecutor said in a statement. Mubarak took refuge in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh after a popular uprising ended his 30-year rule. He was admitted to a hospital there with an unspecified illness the day that prosecutors ordered him detained for questioning.
VENEZUELA
Robbers left empty-handed
Twenty heavily armed robbers broke into the vault of a Russian gold firm on Sunday, but made off with no booty after they failed to open the safe. “Twenty armed assailants broke in, seized control of workers in the mine and processing facility, and later cut open doors to the smelting area,” Rusoro security chief Coronel Emilio Quesada told Globovision television. “They did get into the storage area, but they were unable to open the armored security safes.” The incident took place in the eastern gold mining town of El Callao, and the suspects fled the scene, authorities said. Rusoro Mining has two mines in Bolivar, and a joint venture with the government to exploit gold reserves elsewhere.
PERU
Humala leads Fujimori
Opinion polls published on Sunday show leftist Ollanta Humala leading conservative Keiko Fujimori by 6 percentage points ahead of the presidential runoff on June 5. Humala, a former lieutenant colonel who lost a 2006 presidential bid, was the choice of 42 percent of those surveyed, compared with 36 percent for Fujimori, the daughter of disgraced former president Alberto Fujimori. Howver, there’s considerable uncertainty among voters, as 10 percent said they were undecided and 12 percent indicated they would vote blank or invalid, according to results of the Ipsos-Apoyo poll, published in El Comercio newspaper.
UNITED STATES
Obamas go to church
President Barack Obama and his family marked Easter Sunday by attending a service at an African-American Baptist church in Washington, standing to clap the 120-strong choir. Obama and his wife Michelle brought their daughters Malia, 12, and Sasha, 9, to the service at Shiloh Baptist Church, to massive applause from worshippers. “We are here first and foremost to worship God,” said one reverend who asked the audience to stop taking photos. The Obamas were to play host yesterday to the traditional Easter Egg Roll, with tens of thousands of kids expected to pack the South Lawn of the White House for live music, story-telling and Easter egg rolling.
BRAZIL
Heavy rains leave 12 dead
Authorities on Sunday declared a state of emergency in seven cities in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, where torrential rain has left 12 dead and thousands homeless. The rainfall that began on Thursday has continued for three days straight in some regions of the south, with civil defense officials saying that seven municipalities were in a state of emergency — Taquari, Santa Cruz, Paverama, Piratini, Pareci Novo, Igrejinha and Cacequi — and another seven were on alert. Rains were expected to clear up in the state by yesterday, the region’s civil defense coordinator said.
CHILE
European tourists found
Rescuers have found two European tourists who went missing for two days on the slopes of the Quetrupillan volcano during a snowstorm at a picturesque national park, police said. Italian Anna Lombardo and Czech Phillip Kunk got lost on Thursday while visiting Villarrica National Park, near Temuco in La Araucania region, during heavy snow and gusting winds. Thanks to a distress message they sent using their satellite phone’s GPS tracking system, rescuers found the pair in the Huililco sector of the park. They both showed signs of possible hypothermia, and the tourists were brought to San Francisco de Pucon Hospital, police said on Saturday.
‘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