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.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia