PAKISTAN
Bogus FBI agent nabbed
A confidence trickster has been arrested for posing as an FBI agent and defrauding unwitting customers in Islamabad of US$21,000, police said yesterday. Hayat Khan, 48, was detained in a sting operation on Thursday following a number of complaints in the capital, police official Suhail Akram said. Khan, who also went by the alias Riaz Khan, claimed to have worked for the FBI and trapped his victims by offering to sell US dollars at a lower rate than on the market. He reeled them in by offering favorable exchange rates for relatively small amounts of money and then overcharging them for much larger amounts. “We have recovered 2 million rupees (US$21,000) from his possession and are investigating,” Akram said.
LEBANON
Veteran diplomat dies
Veteran politician, diplomat and press baron Ghassan Tueni died in hospital early yesterday aged 86, his newspaper An-Nahar announced. Known for his sharp intellect, elegance and wit, Tueni became a deputy at the age of 25 and subsequently served in several Cabinets. He was the nation’s ambassador to the UN from 1977 to 1982, at the height of the civil war. Tueni’s life was marked by a series of personal tragedies. His first wife Nadia Hamade, a famous poet, died of cancer, as did his seven-year-old daughter Nayla. His son Makram died in a car accident. In December 2005, his other son Gebran Tueni, also a lawmaker and journalist, was assassinated.
AFGHANISTAN
Prisoners escape from jail
Officials say more than a dozen prisoners, including criminals and members of the Taliban, have escaped from a jail in northern Afghanistan. Sar-e-Pul Provincial Governor Abdul Jabar Haqbeen said a bomb was detonated on the outside of one of the prison walls on Thursday night, and the prisoners escaped through the rubble. Guards opened fire, killing three prisoners, he said. Many were recaptured, but authorities are still looking for 14 prisoners who managed to escape.
PAKISTAN
Bomb death toll rises to 15
The death toll from a bomb attack in the southwestern city of Quetta rose to 15 yesterday after seven people injured died overnight in hospital, police said. The dead included five students from the seminary where the bomb exploded as people gathered to attend a degree ceremony. The 10 others were teachers, employees and relatives. The death toll could rise further, police official Abdur Rahim Khokhar said. Police said 6kg of explosives was planted on a bicycle, parked outside the seminary and covered with garlands. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
UNITED KINGDOM
Forced marriage ban eyed
Parents who force their children to marry will face jail under newly proposed laws, the government said yesterday. The plans to make forced marriage a criminal offense come after officials handled more than 2,000 possible cases of people coerced into matrimony since January last year, the Home Office said. The majority of the cases involved girls under 21 — with some under 15. Many of the families came from Pakistan and Bangladesh, it said in a statement. “Forced marriage is abhorrent and is little more than slavery,” Prime Minister David Cameron said. The government hopes to introduce the legislation to parliament by 2014, the Home Office said.
VENEZUELA
Court interferes with parties
The Supreme Court has issued decisions shaking up the leadership of two small political parties and apparently preventing them from backing opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles. Capriles condemned the court decisions on Thursday in a message on Twitter, saying that President Hugo Chavez’s government is resorting to “judicial tricks” to keep the parties Podemos and PPT from supporting his candidacy. Both used to be pro-Chavez, but have in recent years moved to the opposition. The Supreme Court said in a statement that it had decided to recognize former pro-Chavez state governor Didalco Bolivar as the leader of Podemos, rather than established leader Ismael Garcia. A similar ruling in the case of PPT voided the party’s most recent internal elections and ordered it to hold new elections within 90 days.
PERU
Strong quake shakes south
A powerful magnitude 6.0 quake shook the south on Thursday, US seismologists said, with authorities indicating no immediate reports of casualties or damage. The US Geological Survey said the temblor had a depth of 99.7km. It struck at 11:03am about 117km west-northwest of Arequipa. Many people rushed out of homes and businesses and onto the street in search of safety from the quake, which was also felt in the neighboring Ica and Moquegua regions. Telephone lines were cut temporarily. “At the moment, there are no reports” of victims from the temblor, said Geophysical Institute of Peru chief Hernan Tavera, who said that the damage was limited to minor landslides of dirt and stones.
CHILE
Pinochet film proves divisive
The late dictator General Augusto Pinochet is dividing the country once again. Pinochet sympathizers plan to honor the former strongman with the screening of a new documentary about his dictatorship years in a Santiago theater, but families of dissidents who disappeared during the 1973-1990 military regime called the homage disrespectful. The relatives gathered on Thursday at a memorial site and Pinochet-era detention and torture center to ask President Sebastian Pinera to ban tomorrow’s planned screening. They wore black-and-white photos of their missing relatives around their necks. Pinera’s administration says organizers of the screening have the right to express themselves.
MEXICO
Man has double transplant
A man whose arms were severely burned by electricity became the first patient in Latin America to receive a double arm transplant, doctors said on Thursday. Gabriel Granados, a 52-year-old father of two whose arms were amputated just below the elbow, received the arms of a 34-year-old shooting victim, said Martin Iglesias, head of the surgical team that performed the operation. Granados told a news conference that the transplant was “terrific” and that he has begun to feel his new hands. Before the surgery, doctors say they practiced the procedure on corpses.
PUERTO RICO
US authorities seize cocaine
US federal authorities say they have seized 330kg of cocaine and arrested six men from the Dominican Republic who were aboard a boat traveling toward Puerto Rico. The interim director of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Puerto Rico, Angel Melendez, said on Thursday that the boat was spotted near the northern coastal town of Aguadilla this week.
‘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
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
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