JAPAN
Man arrested for hacking
Police yesterday arrested a man suspected of being behind a computer hacking campaign following an exhaustive hunt that at one stage had authorities tracking down a cat for clues, reports said. Yusuke Katayama, 30, was arrested on charges of using a remote computer and sending a mass-killing threat to a comic book event after months of evading investigators with a series of vexing riddles, broadcaster NHK said. The channel aired footage of detectives escorting a chubby man with glasses into a police station. He is believed to have sent numerous threats from computers around the country, including against a school and a kindergarten attended by grandchildren of Emperor Akihito. An anonymous hacker sent messages to newspapers and broadcasters last month, claiming details of a computer virus used to dispatch the threats were strapped to a cat living on an island near Tokyo. After cracking a set of riddles, police found the cat and removed a digital memory card from its collar that revealed a message saying “a past experience in a criminal case” had caused the hacker to act.
THAILAND
Car bomb kills five soldiers
Five soldiers were killed yesterday in a bomb attack by suspected insurgents in Yala Province, police said. The bomb, which also wounded a sixth soldier, was detonated as the troops passed by in their patrol vehicle. “About 10 insurgents are believed to have hidden nearby and detonated the bomb, which was attached to another car,” Police Major Torphan Phusuntiae said by telephone. He said a man and a woman working in a rubber plantation were also wounded in the blast.
RUSSIA
Police detain 271 in probe
Police have detained 271 people, most of them from the North Caucasus and central Asia, in an investigation into involvement in “terrorist activities,” authorities in St Petersburg said on Saturday. The regional investigative committee said that most detainees were from the North Caucasus and the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Azerbaijan. An Egyptian and an Afghan were also detained. The committee said they were detained “in order to check if they had legal grounds for being in St Petersburg and their possible involvement in terrorist activities.”
SWEDEN
Six win ice pole contest
Six contestants have braved butt-numbing cold and boredom to win an annual ice pole-sitting contest in the northern town of Vilhelmina. Two women and four men shared the 20,000 kronor prize (US$3,100) for remaining on 2.5m blocks of ice during the 48-hour contest, which ended on Saturday. Competitors said the worst part was not the cold — temperatures dipped below minus-28°C — but the monotony, even though they were allowed to come down for 10-minute toilet breaks.
OMAN
Jailed activists on strike
Seventeen jailed cyberactivists have begun a hunger strike in protest against delays in their appeals, media reported yesterday. The activists in Samayl central prison launched a hunger strike on Friday “to protest against what they claimed to be a delay in reviewing their appeal by the Supreme Court,” the Times of Oman quoted their lawyer Yaqoob al-Harthi as saying. “The activists will only drink water until their demands are met,” Harthi said, adding that their families had submitted a letter to the Supreme Court demanding speedier hearings.
‘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
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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in