PAKISTAN
Gunmen kill eight Shiites
Police said gunmen riding on a motorcycle killed eight Shiite Muslims in a pair of sectarian attacks in the southwest of the country yesterday. Senior police officer Shaukat Ajmad said assailants opened fire on a car, killing six people in Quetta, the capital of southwestern Baluchistan Province. Minutes later, they shot and killed two people in a rickshaw in the same area. Shiite Muslims are a minority in an overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim country. In recent years attacks against them have become increasingly common.
UNITED KINGDOM
Hacker gets jail time
A judge on Friday sentenced a computer hacker to two years and eight months in jail for breaking into the Web site of the country’s biggest abortion providers and stealing the personal details of thousands of women. James Jeffery, who claimed to be a member of hacking collective Anonymous, said he targeted the British Pregnancy Advice Service because he opposed the decisions of two women he knew to have abortions. Prosecutors said the 27-year-old defaced the site with the Anonymous logo and stole personal information on about 10,000 women. Jeffrey pleaded guilty to two charges under the Computer Misuse Act.
UNITED STATES
Drone attacks to continue
Officials said the White House had no intention of ending CIA drone strikes against militant targets on Pakistani soil. That could set the two countries up for more diplomatic tensions after Pakistan’s parliament unanimously approved new guidelines for the country’s troubled relationship with Washington. The guidelines allow for the blockade of NATO supplies to be lifted, but also demand a halt to CIA-led missile attacks. Officials said they would work to find common ground with Pakistan over the coming weeks, but if a suspected terrorist target came into the laser sights of a CIA drone’s hellfire missiles, they would take the shot. Pakistan had suggested transferring the drones to its control.
UNITED STATES
Man guilty on terror charges
An Albanian man living in New York has pleaded guilty to a terrorism charge after admitting he tried to go to Pakistan to join a radical jihadist group. Agron Hasbajrami entered the plea on Thursday in federal court. He faces up to 15 years in prison and has agreed to be deported. Authorities said he sent more than US$1,000 to support terrorist activities in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and communicated with someone in Pakistan who said he was a member of an armed group that had killed US soldiers. Hasbajrami was arrested at Kennedy Airport in September last year.
UNITED STATES
Texas drug gang nabbed
Members of a Texas-based drug-trafficking ring accused of shipping more than 500kg of marijuana to the island of St Croix were arrested on Thursday in the US Virgin Islands, authorities said. Among the 11 people arrested during early morning raids in was a local court officer, St Croix police chief Christopher Howell said. Six other people were arrested in the Dallas area last week. Authorities accused the group of mailing more than 100 parcels weighing anywhere from 2kg to 11kg to various addresses in St Croix over a period of almost three years. Authorities said they had documented about US$400,000 in alleged proceeds from drug sales, but said the total drugs shipped were likely worth much more.
UNITED STATES
Tuna in salmonella scare
A yellowfin tuna product used to make dishes like sushi and sashimi sold at restaurants and grocery stores has been linked to an outbreak of salmonella that has sickened more than 100 people in 20 states and the District of Columbia, the government said. The Food and Drug Administration reported Friday that 116 cases have been reported, including 12 people who have been hospitalized. No deaths have been reported. Moon Marine USA Corp. of California, also known as MMI, is voluntarily recalling 26,683kg of frozen raw yellowfin tuna. It was labeled as Nakaochi Scrape AA or AAA when it was sold.
UNITED STATES
Soldier told to stay silent
A civilian attorney for the soldier charged in the shooting deaths of 17 Afghan villagers says his client will not participate in an army review aimed at determining his mental state. Staff Sergeant Robert Bales was expected to face what is called a “sanity board” examination of whether he is competent to stand trial and of his mental state at the time of the March 11 pre-dawn massacre in two southern Afghanistan villages. His Seattle attorney, John Henry Browne, says he instructed Bales to invoke his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent because the Army will not allow Bales to have an attorney at the sanity board review and will not allow the examination to be recorded.
UNITED STATES
Drug baron gets 22 years
The leader of a Mexican drug cartel was sentenced on Friday to more than 22 years in prison by a federal judge in Colorado, who said the kingpin’s criminal enterprise sold US$1 billion worth of cocaine in eight US states. Oscar Arriola, 43, was “a clear and present danger to this country and its citizens,” US District Judge Robert Blackburn said. The cartel distributed cocaine in 2002 and 2003 in New York, Illinois, Georgia and five other states from a storage center at a Colorado ranch, before an anonymous tip led to an investigation, the US Drug Enforcement Administration said. Arriola and his brother, Miguel, were among 29 people indicted in 2003 in federal court in Denver. Oscar Arriola was arrested in Mexico in 2006 and extradited to the US in 2010.
UNITED STATES
Women admit abducting man
Two Kentucky women have pleaded guilty to helping kidnap and assault a gay man in the first convictions using a section of the federal hate crime law that protects against attacks motivated by sexual orientation. The US Attorney’s Office in Lexington said Mable Ashley Jenkins and Alexis LeeAnn Jenkins entered guilty pleas to aiding and abetting the kidnapping and hate crime assault of a man in April last year at a mountaintop Appalachian park in southeastern Kentucky.
UNITED STATES
Burglar caught in shower
Police say a naked burglar has been arrested while taking a shower after he sipped champagne and ate a meal in a Southern California family’s home. San Bernardino County sheriff’s Sergeant Steve Wilson says 25-year-old Michael Calvert was arrested at gunpoint by deputies while he lathered up in the shower on Thursday night. KCDZ radio says that after helping himself to a bottle of champagne and a meal, Calvert decided to take a shower in the Joshua Tree home. The Mojave Desert community is 210km east of downtown Los Angeles. The homeowners called police after returning home at 8:10pm and hearing someone in the shower.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in 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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was