CHINA
Baby-napper gets death
A Chinese court says it has sentenced a woman to death for trafficking and abducting 223 infants from late 2009 to August 2010.The Qujing Intermediate People’s Court in southwest China’s Yunnan Province said yesterday in a statement posted on its official Web site that Jiang Kaizhi was the leader of a trafficking ring that abducted and bought infants from the province and transported them to be sold in central China’s Henan Province. The court says 35 others involved in the trafficking ring were sentenced on Friday to prison for terms ranging from three years to life.
THAILAND
Two Canadians found dead
The bodies of two Canadian sisters have been found in a hotel room on the popular tourist resort island of Phi Phi, Thai police said yesterday, without revealing the suspected cause of death. The sisters, aged 26 and 20, were found dead on Friday afternoon by hotel staff on the Andaman sea island, 800km south of Bangkok. “Their bodies were found a little after midday [Friday]. They were sisters,” said Lieutenant Pongpan Waiyawat of the island’s police force. “We have to wait for the post mortem to determine the cause of death, but based on initial investigations there’s no sign of violence in their room.”
INDIA
Dozens die in bus plunge
At least 32 pilgrims were killed and more than 20 injured yesterday when their bus plunged off a bridge in western India, the Press Trust of India reported. The pilgrims were returning from a visit to the popular Shirdi Saibaba temple, built in honor of an Indian guru, when the accident occurred before dawn in Maharashtra State’s Osmanabad District, police said. “We had to struggle to rescue survivors and retrieve the victims’ bodies from water,” a police official said. Nearly 135,000 people, or 366 a day, died on India’s roads in 2010, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.
BANGLADESH
Reporter stabbed to death
Police say that unidentified men have stabbed a journalist to death apparently for his reports on the illegal drug trade in the southwest. Local police chief A.K.M. Faruk Hossain said yesterday that the attack on Zamal Uddin took place late on Friday at Kashipur Bazar in Jessore District bordering India. The area is 140km west of the capital, Dhaka. Hossain says the reporter was rushed to hospital with severe injuries and later declared dead. Uddin worked for the Bengali-language Gramer Kagoj daily. The police chief says Uddin had recently filed a complaint with police seeking security after he was threatened for his articles on the illicit drug trade.
BANGLADESH
One dead in bridge collapse
One person was killed and up to 10 were missing after several vehicles plunged into a canal as a small bridge collapsed in Bangladesh’s northeast on Friday night, police said. Six trucks, a microbus and an auto-rickshaw were on the bridge when it caved in, making a loud noise and plunging the vehicles into a canal at Companyganj, about 200km from the capital, police said. “We’ve recovered one dead body and rescued 15 persons alive. The rescued persons were sent to local hospitals,” district police chief Shakhawat Hossain said. Hossain could not give the exact number of missing people as police did not know how many passengers the lorries were carrying, which had been transporting stones from a nearby quarry.
NIGERIA
Soldiers kill ‘militants’
An official says soldiers have killed four people in a raid on a suspected media center belonging to the radical Boko Haram sect in the north of the country. Army spokesman Lieutenant Iweha Ikedichi said the soldiers stormed a house in a residential area of Kano City on Friday and shot dead four suspected members of the sect. Ikedichi said the soldiers found 12 laptops and two scanners, leading them to believe the house was a media center for the sect, which has held telephone conference calls with journalists. He said they also found a gun, some ammunition and explosives.
IRAQ
ISI claims bomb campaign
Al-Qaeda affiliate the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) has claimed responsibility for a wave of bombings across the country that killed 72 people during a Shiite pilgrimage, the SITE Monitoring Service said yesterday. US-based SITE said the ISI, in a statement posted on jihadist forums, dubbed the attacks the “blessed Wednesday invasion.” Coordinated attacks took place nationwide on Wednesday, leaving 72 people dead and more than 250 wounded, marking the deadliest day in almost 10 months. They came as pilgrims headed to shrines to mark the death of Imam Musa Kadhim.
EGYPT
Bedouins release captive
Bedouins who kidnapped a Singaporean tourist in the Sinai Peninsula on Friday released him after several hours, a security source said. The Bedouins were demanding the release of one of their tribesmen arrested for possession of drugs, security officials said. The freeing of the tourist, one of a group of 20 visiting Sinai, was confirmed by the official news agency MENA, which said it came after “efforts by the security forces in coordination with the chiefs of tribes.” The tourist was abducted in central Sinai where several foreigners have been kidnapped over the past months by Bedouins demanding the release of tribesmen they feel have been unjustly detained.
TOGO
Dozens wounded in protests
The political opposition says dozens of people have been wounded and arrested in three days of protests in the West African nation. Opposition coalition leader Zeus Atta Mensah Ajavon said on Thursday that at least 56 people were seriously hurt this week. The government said more than 30 police and security officers were also wounded. The nation is scheduled to hold legislative and municipal elections in October, but Togolese opposition parties have expressed disagreement about a new formula for the redrawing of boundaries for constituencies.
UNITED STATES
US, Palestinians to meet
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat will meet with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton this week in a bid to try to breathe new life into stalled peace talks, an official said on Friday. Clinton had already met with Israeli negotiator Yitzhak Molho and “she will see Erakat next week,” Department of State spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said. Clinton recently talked with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and separately with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. While direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians remain in deep freeze, top officials from both sides have been holding a quiet dialogue on a range of issues, including an exchange of letters between Netanyahu and Abbas.
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