INDIA
Journalist arrested
Police yesterday said they arrested an Indian journalist in connection with last month’s bomb attack on an Israeli diplomatic vehicle in New Delhi, their first arrest in an attack that Israel accuses Iran of orchestrating. Police arrested Syed Mohammed Kazmi on Tuesday after investigations showed he had been in touch with a suspect they believe might have stuck a magnetic bomb on an Israeli diplomat’s car, police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said. Kazmi, 50, was being questioned and was scheduled to appear in court yesterday before being handed over to officials of the investigating agencies for further questioning.
JAPAN
Seiji Ozawa takes time out
Seiji Ozawa, Japan’s most famous conductor, is canceling all scheduled performances through to the end of February next year in order to recover from a recent spell of bad health that has included bouts of pneumonia, he said yesterday. The 76-year-old former Vienna State Opera musical director, who before that was conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in January 2010 and completed treatment later that year. “This was an extremely difficult decision for me,” Ozawa. “For the next year I will devote myself to rehabilitation and diet therapy to rebuild my physical strength so that I will be able to appear before you, at full strength, to conduct once more.”
AUSTRALIA
Spiders outwit floods
Thousands of spiders have cast eerie webs over vast areas of flood-hit Australia after being forced to seek shelter by the rising waters. Experts said the spiders may be spinning the sticky webs to help them survive the deluge, which has forced thousands of people to leave their homes. “They are trying to hide away [from the waters],” said Owen Seeman, arachnid expert at Queensland Museum. The spider webs were seen near the inland city of Wagga Wagga in New South Wales. The Australian Museum’s entomology collections manager Graham Milledge said the spiders’ behavior was known as ballooning and was typical after spiders are forced to flee from floods.
INDONESIA
Woman dies of bird flu
A 24-year-old woman has died of bird flu on Indonesia’s Sumatra Island, the fifth human death from the virus this year, a health ministry official said yesterday. “She tested positive for the H5N1 virus by the health ministry’s laboratory. It’s the fifth death here this year,” said the ministry’s head of animal-borne infectious diseases, Rita Kusriastuti. “The woman was living in an area where there are many ducks and chickens. She also had some [poultry] in her house,” Kusriastuti said, adding that she died on March 1 in a hospital in Bengkulu City.
PHILIPPINES
Ex-elections head in court
A Philippine court has entered a “not guilty” plea during the arraignment of a former elections chief accused of aiding vote fraud allegedly ordered by ex-president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Former Elections Commission chairman Benjamin Abalos has been detained since December on charges he helped rig the 2007 senatorial elections to ensure victory for Arroyo’s candidates in a Muslim autonomous region governed by her political ally. Abalos has denied the charges, but he questioned the Pasay City court’s jurisdiction over the case and refused to enter a plea during yesterday’s arraignment. Judge Eugenio dela Cruz entered the plea for him.
SPAIN
Baby vomit deters predators
Babies of a bird species called the Eurasian roller vomit a foul-smelling orange liquid as a defense mechanism against predators, biologists have discovered. Offspring of the bright-blue jackdaw-sized bird — Latin name Coracias garrulus — throw up the repugnant fluid when they are frightened in their nests, according to a paper that appeared yesterday in the journal Biology Letters. Covered in vomit, the nestlings not surprisingly become less attractive as a snack, the team says. The smell also alerts parents, returning to the nest, that a threatening incident has happened in their absence, they believe. The study was led by Deseada Parejo of Spain’s Estacio Experimental de Zonas Aridas.
MEXICO
Army raid reveals rockets
The army seized a shoulder-fired missile, a rocket launcher and three grenades in an operation against drug trafficking in the Gulf of Mexico state of Veracruz, the Defense Department said on Tuesday. Soldiers also found four rifles, 2,870 rounds of ammunition, a bulletproof vehicle and packages of cocaine and marijuana in a raid in the ranch town of El Guayabal. Unidentified men fled the ranch when the troops arrived on Monday and could not be captured.
UNITED STATES
Cannon blast kills girlfriend
A man was arrested on Tuesday after a homemade cannon blasted through his mobile home, killing his girlfriend in a mountain community near San Diego, authorities said. Richard Fox, 39, shot the cannon after loading it with fireworks powder, San Diego County sheriff’s Sergeant David Martinez said. His 38-year-old girlfriend was found dead from shrapnel wounds when authorities arrived at the home. Fox was treated at a hospital for shrapnel wounds to his right leg and arrested for investigation of exploding a device resulting in death, Martinez said.
BRAZIL
Strike causes fuel shortage
Sao Paulo’s 2,000 gas stations are rapidly running out of fuel as a strike by truck drivers who haul gas in South America’s largest city completed a second day, according to business representatives. However, a state court judge ruled late on Tuesday, that the strike must end, but it was not clear if that order would be obeyed by the truckers. Truckers are protesting the city government’s attempt to restrict where big trucks can drive in a metropolis infamous for streets that are congested at all hours. Jose Gouveia, president of an association representing gas station owners said almost all stations were hit by the strike. “They’re either running low or are completely out of gas and ethanol,” he said. “I expect all of them will be completely out of fuel by the end of the day.”
RUSSIA
Bomber kills five policemen
A female suicide bomber has killed at least five policemen by blowing herself up at a traffic police post in the restive Dagestan region of southern Russia. The woman detonated her bomb late on Tuesday outside Karabudakhkent, a village 40km south of the provincial capital Makhachkala, Russia’s RIA news agency quoted local police as saying. Dagestan faces almost daily shootings and bomb attacks as part of an Islamist insurgency across the mainly Muslim North Caucasus following two separatist wars in Chechnya. “The female terrorist approached the [traffic police] enclosure and blew herself up,” the police official said.
‘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
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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in