YEMEN
Gunmen kill US citizen
Two gunmen yesterday shot dead a US citizen who worked at a language school in the city of Taez, a security official said. The assailants rode a motorbike in their attack on the man, who was the deputy director of a Swedish language center in the city, 270km southwest of Sana’a, the official said on condition of anonymity, adding they fled the scene after the shooting. The victim was shot dead in his car in the neighborhood of Sena, he added. The US embassy in Sana’a said it did not have information about the killing and was investigating. The attack comes two days after an official said suspected al-Qaeda gunmen abducted a Swiss woman, also a teacher at a language school, in the Red Sea port of Hodeida and moved her to the restive Shabwah Governorate further east. Al-Qaeda’s local branch is active in the south and east of the country, but not in Taez, which was a major center for the yearlong opposition movement against former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, that forced the veteran leader to step down last month.
THAILAND
Red Bull co-creator dies
Chaleo Yoovidhya, who rose from poverty to become one of the world’s richest men thanks to astute marketing of the “Red Bull” energy drink, died on Saturday. Local media said he had died of natural causes in hospital in Bangkok. His age was variously put at 89 or 90, although some sources gave his date of birth as Aug. 17, 1923, making him 88. Chaleo was ranked 205th on the Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest people, with a fortune put at US$5 billion. Born into a Chinese immigrant family, he never flaunted the wealth he accumulated and avoided publicity. According to Thailand’s Nation newspaper, he had not given a media interview or made any public appearances for 30 years.
INDIA
Ex-Mr Universe turns 100
A former Mr Universe turned 100 and says happiness and a life without tensions are the key to his longevity. Manohar Aich, who is only 150cm tall, won the Mr Universe title in London in 1952. His children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren gathered yesterday in the eastern city of Kolkata to celebrate his birthday. Hindu priests chanted prayers, while a feast was laid out to honor a man who overcame many hurdles, including grinding poverty and a stint in prison, to achieve bodybuilding glory. Aich’s career began in a British colonial prison where he spent long hours exercising to build his muscles.
CHINA
Funeral draws many: RFA
An overseas broadcaster said thousands of Tibetans gathered to mourn a farmer who set himself on fire while calling for the return of the Dalai Lama. Radio Free Asia (RFA) said Sonam Thargyal fastened cotton padding to his body with iron wire and doused himself with kerosene before setting himself on fire on Saturday in Tongren, a monastery town in Qinghai Province. The US broadcaster said as many as 7,000 Tibetans took part in Thargyal’s funeral and cremation ceremony. The London-based Free Tibet group said the gathering turned into a demonstration, with Tibetans marching while calling for the return of the Dalai Lama, their exiled spiritual leader. As with most reported unrest in Tibetan areas, the incident could not be independently verified.
CANADA
‘Maud’ can go home
Canada authorized the repatriation to Norway of Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen’s three-mast ship Maud from the Canadian Arctic, a project representative said on Friday. The Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board revisited a December decision and granted an export permit for the ship, said Jan Wanggaard, manager of the effort to bring the Maud to Norway. Residents of Cambridge Bay, Canada, had opposed losing a treasured artifact that has become a tourist attraction in the far north. “We can now go ahead and make plans to prepare ourselves for the great challenge to finally bring Maud home,” Wanggaard said. The Norwegian group hopes to return the shipwreck to Norway at mid-year to be the centerpiece of a new museum.
BELGIUM
Alleged bomber charged
A man suspected of setting fire to a Brussels mosque, killing an imam, has been charged with a terrorism offence, Belga news agency reported on Saturday, quoting prosecutors. The man had originally been charged with causing death by arson, with the aggravating factor that the attack was religiously inspired. An additional charge of committing a terrorist offence had been added on Friday, based on what the suspect had said during his interrogations, Belga quoted prosecution spokesman Jean-Marc Meilleur as saying. Meilleur said on Tuesday, the day after the attack, that the man, a self-described Sunni Muslim in his mid-30s, had told investigators he had sought to “scare” the Shiite community, which he held responsible for Syria’s crackdown on dissent.
COLOMBIA
Alleged drug boss arrested
Police on Saturday said they nabbed Jose Samir Renteria, wanted by the US as an alleged pioneer in the use of small submarines to transport illegal drugs. Renteria, alias Morfi, was wanted by US and Colombian authorities for allegedly shipping cocaine in the subs, the police Web site said. Arrested in Cali, Renteria is alleged to have started shipping drugs out of the Pacific port city of Buenaventura in the 1980s. Later, the suspect, who is a mechanical whiz, allegedly forged alliances with a front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the crime gang Los Rastrojos. He also allegedly served as a go-between for Colombia’s Norte del Valle cartel and Mexico’s Sinaloa drugs cartel, police said.
VENEZUELA
Twelve policemen arrested
Twelve police officers have been detained for allegedly gunning down the daughter of a Chilean consul in the northwestern city of Maracaibo, the government announced. Karen Berendique, 19, was killed early on Saturday when she was riding in a pick-up truck driven by her 28-year-old brother, Fernando, according to the Venezuelan prosecutors’ office. Jose Humberto Ramirez, national director of the Criminal and Scientific Investigative Corps, to which the detained officers belong, said the officers had opened fire when the driver failed to obey the command to stop. “The driver did not respond to the voice command, and a chase ensued,” Ramirez said. The pursuers, who were investigating car theft in the area, allegedly opened fire, and three of the bullets hit Karen Berendique, the official said. Ramirez expressed regret about what he called “the bad practice” among the agents of reaching for the gun in situations where use of force could be avoided.
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