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.
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