KENYA
Scores drowned or missing
The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) says 55 people have drowned or are missing after an overcrowded boat capsized off the Somali coast. It said the incident late on Tuesday represented the biggest loss of life in the Gulf of Aden since February last year, when 57 Somali refugees and migrants drowned while attempting to reach Yemen. Five people survived the accident, it added. The survivors said the boat was overcrowded and capsized 15 minutes into its journey. Twenty-three bodies were recovered; the rest are presumed to have drowned.
NORTH KOREA
US citizen arrested
Pyongyang yesterday confirmed that it had arrested a US citizen last month, saying legal action would be taken against him, but gave no details of the charges. The man, identified as Pae Jun-ho, entered the country on Nov. 3 as a tourist and “committed a crime” against the country, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said. “He was put into custody by a relevant institution,” it added. KCNA said consular officials from the Swedish embassy, which acts on behalf of the US, had visited Pae yesterday. The arrest was first reported earlier this month by a South Korean newspaper, which had identified the detainee as a 44-year-old Korean-American tour operator.
THAILAND
Iranian suspects in court
Two Iranians arrested after a botched bomb plot allegedly targeting Israeli diplomats say they are innocent and were stunned to discover explosives stashed in a cabinet in their rented Bangkok home. Both men appeared in court yesterday, 10 months after the explosives blew up their home on Valentine’s Day and uncovered a plot that Israeli officials say was part of an Iranian-backed network of terror. Their lawyer said the men would testify that they had no clue there were bombs in their house and that they tried to run to safety after finding them. One of them, Saeid Moradi, lost both his legs after running into the street with explosives that he tried to hurl at police officers.
PHILIPPINES
Three tourists rescued
Two German tourists and an Australian have been rescued following two days in the sea after their boat capsized while they were island hopping, the coast guard said yesterday. Ralf Harald Auer, 54, his son Thomas Auer, 20, and Australian family friend, Joshua Marsh, were taken to hospital and treated for bruises and dehydration before being released, Chief Petty Officer Venerando Celis said. The Filipino who was piloting the boat was missing after he attempted to swim ashore to seek help when the vessel was knocked over by waves in the Sibuyan Sea on Tuesday, Celis said. The tourists were rescued by a passing freighter which took them to the port of Iloilo.
UNITED STATES
Urinating marine sentenced
A US Marine staff sergeant who urinated on dead Taliban insurgents and posed for photographs with the bodies has pleaded guilty to two charges in a military court, the Marine Corps said on Thursday. His sentence was a reduction in rank and forfeiture of US$500 in pay. Staff Sergeant Joseph Chamblin pleaded guilty at a special court martial at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, to dereliction of duty for failing to properly supervise junior marines. He also pleaded guilty to wrongfully urinating on a deceased enemy combatant. The incident occurred during a counter-insurgency operation in Helmand Province in Afghanistan in July last year. It came to light in January this year when a videotape of the incident was posted on YouTube and other Web sites. The video showed four men in camouflage marine combat uniforms urinating on three corpses. One of them joked: “Have a nice day, buddy,” while another made a lewd joke. The video was one of a series of offensive incidents involving US service members that roused Afghan ire and led to heightened tensions between Washington and Kabul earlier this year.
ARGENTINA
Woman to wed twin’s killer
A woman plans to marry the convicted killer of her twin sister. Victor Cingolani is serving a 13-year sentence for murdering girlfriend Johana Casas, a fashion model, in August 2010, but insists he is innocent and planned to marry her twin yesterday in his prison in Santa Cruz Province. Cingolani said in a TV interview on Thursday that he and 22-year-old fiancee Edith Casas had been granted permission to wed in a civil registry in town, but decided to do it in jail instead to avoid a media circus. The mother of the twins, Marcelina Orellana, has vowed to do everything she can to prevent Edith from going ahead with the nuptials. Casas insisted that Cingolani was unjustly convicted, saying he “is a guy who would not hurt a fly. He did not kill her.” Another man, Marcos Diaz, who had also gone out with Johana, is also doing time over the killing.
UNITED STATES
Twitter offers tweet record
Twitter is offering its more than 200 million users a chance to keep a digital scrapbook of all their tweets. The tool, announced this week, is designed to make it easier for people to review all their activity on Twitter’s trend-setting messaging service. When it is available, the downloading option will appear at the bottom of each user’s settings menu. Twitter, which is based in San Francisco, said it may take a several weeks, or even months, before everyone gets the feature. After a records request is made, users will receive an e-mail on how to download their personal archive. For Twitter’s earliest users, the records date back to 2006 when Twitter started.
UNITED STATES
Instagram quells outcry
Instagram has abandoned wording in its new terms-of-service agreement that sparked outcry from users who were concerned it meant their photographs could appear in advertisements. In a blog post late on Thursday, the popular mobile photo-sharing service says it has reverted to language in the advertising section of its terms of service that appeared when it was launched in October 2010. Instagram is now owned by Facebook and maintains that it would like to experiment with different forms of advertising to make money. Its blog post says that it will now ask users’ permission to introduce possible ad products only after they are fully developed.
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