NEPAL
Students protest fuel hike
Students are burning tires to block traffic on key roads in Kathmandu and the eastern town of Itahari to protest a government decision to boost the prices of gasoline, diesel and cooking fuel. Police say there have been no reports of violence in the protests yesterday. The government decided on Wednesday to increase prices of various fuels by an average of 10 percent. State-run Nepal Oil Corp imports all oil products from India and says it had to increase the price because the cost of its supplies had increased and because it was facing losses.
CHINA
Guangdong official sacked
The government has dismissed a member of Guangdong Province Chinese Communist Party Standing Committee for “serious violation of rules,” according to the party’s news Web site, which cited an unidentified spokesman from the Organization Department of the party’s Central Committee. The official was the director of United Front Department of the local party committee, according to the report. It didn’t provide more detail about the allegations against him.
NORTH KOREA
Kim Jong-un visits military
New leader Kim Jong-un has visited an army unit, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said yesterday, as the new leader and head of the armed forces seeks to burnish his military credentials. Soldiers were “enthusiastically cheering in tears of emotion” as Kim toured a military base and took photos with troops, KCNA reported. It was the second reported visit by Kim, the youngest son of late leader Kim Jong-il, to a military unit this month and the latest attempt to help him tighten his grip on power. Kim Jong-un toured the base as his “father would do,” said KCNA, without disclosing the location or date of the visit. Army top brass, including Ri Yong-ho, the chief of the military’s general staff, accompanied him.
INDIA
Teacher a ‘billionaire’
A high-school teacher, with a monthly salary of around US$700, was astounded when a routine online check of his bank account showed a balance of almost US$10 billion. Parijat Saha, from the town of Balurghat in West Bengal State, said he had checked his State Bank of India account online last Sunday to confirm reception of a 10,000 rupee (US$200) interest payment. “Instead I saw this astronomical amount,” he said by telephone. The account showed a balance of 496 billion rupees. After recovering from the initial shock at becoming an overnight billionaire, Saha, 42, said he immediately called a friend he knew at the bank to point out what was obviously a major accounting error.
The State Bank of India said it was not immediately clear how the amount came to be registered in Saha’s account.
AFGHANISTAN
Aid sent to snowbound
Helicopters flew supplies into snowbound villages in the mountainous northeast yesterday as the death toll from heavy snowfalls and avalanches rose to at least 28, an official said. Dozens more people have been injured or are trapped in their homes under up to 3m of snow in Badakhshan Province, where main roads have been cut, making it difficult for rescue workers to reach affected villages. “The latest statistics we have are 28 people killed, 45 injured and 600 cattle killed from seven districts of Badakhshan,” said Abdul Maroof Rasikh, a spokesman for the provincial governor. “This is not the final toll, the fatalities may increase in the coming days.”
MEXICO
Teens detained for killings
Four teenagers have been detained for allegedly killing four students and a student’s father at a shady student organization in a western state last month, officials said on Wednesday. The bodies of a 56-year-old man, his 21-year-old son, two 17-year-olds and a 16-year-old were found buried in the grounds of the Federation of Students of Guadalajara in the middle of last month. The suspects, aged from 13 to 19, were still at school and worked at the student federation, a statement from the attorney general’s office of Jalisco state said. Investigators said last month that the victims went to complain about a rise in protection money for selling snacks outside the campus when a dispute broke out.
MEXICO
Seized kids were abused
An official says four of the 10 children seized as part of a child-trafficking probe involving Irish couples in Guadalajara were sexually abused. Jalisco state attorney general Tomas Coronado says a medical examination determined the abuse. He gave no other details. Coronado told reporters on Wednesday that 11 Irish couples are being questioned in the case. He said 15 Irish citizens have already spoken to investigators in Guadalajara. Authorities last week detained four women with children between two months and two years of age. A woman told police her sister-in-law was trying to sell one of her babies and “rent” the other one.
COLOMBIA
Police arrest trafficker
Police said on Wednesday that they had arrested Luis Fernando Otalvaro, known as “the Mathematician,” a suspected member of a major drug ring who has been sought by the US on trafficking charges. Officials said the 57-year-old Otalvaro, arrested at the Medellin airport, was part of a group known as “the board of directors of drug trafficking,” headed at one time by Luis Agustin Caicedo, known as “Don Lucho,” who is being held by the US. A police statement said Otalvaro was captured as he tried to board a commercial flight in Medellin for the southwestern city of Cali.
COLOMBIA
Oil pipeline blown up
Unknown attackers blew up a section of an oil pipeline near the Venezuelan border, the company Petronorte said on Wednesday. “We cannot say who did this, but we know it was an attack, an explosion” at the Rio Zulia-Ayacucho pipeline, Petronorte spokesman Renzo Coronado told RCN Radio. The spokesman did not indicate how much oil was spilled, but said efforts were underway to control the damage and prevent contamination of the Catatumbo River. The area has seen several attacks in recent days by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a Marxist group fighting the government for decades.
UNITED STATES
One in five disturbed
One in five adults, or nearly 50 million people, suffered mental illnesses in the past year, with women and young adults suffering disproportionately, a government report released yesterday found. The survey by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found women were more likely than men (23 percent to 16.8 percent) to have experienced a mental illness, while the rate of mental illness among people aged 18 to 25 was twice that of those aged 50 and older. The administration defined mental illness among adults as diagnosable mental, behavioral or emotional disorders, excluding developmental disorders and substance use.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion