SAUDI ARABIA
Police arrest 18 for spying
The government arrested 18 people, including an Iranian, a Lebanese and 16 Saudis, for spying, it said on Tuesday. Ministry of the Interior spokesman Mansour al-Turki said on state television the suspects were “involved with a spy network working for a foreign country.” Turki later told media he could not say who the 18 were suspected of spying for, pending further investigation. The spying arrests, the first in recent memory, follow a string of accusations by the government that an unnamed foreign country, widely understood to mean Iran, had instigated local protests. “They were gathering information about installations and vital areas in the country and providing intelligence agencies of that state with it,” al-Turki said.
EGYPT
Qaddafi associates arrested
Police arrested a cousin of late Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, a former Libyan ambassador to Egypt and another ex-Libyan official on Tuesday, a source told media. The source said Ahmed Qaddaf al-Dam, 60, who had been a special Libyan envoy, ex-ambassador Ali Maria and Mohamed Ibrahim Mansour, who headed a Libyan state fund under Qaddafi, had been detained. Interpol’s Web site says that Qaddaf al-Dam was wanted by Libyan authorities for counterfeiting, forgery, fraud and money laundering, while Mansour was wanted for corruption. Details on charges against Ali Maria were not available. Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan welcomed the arrests and called for the immediate handover of the men. “They will face a fair trial here,” Zeidan told a news conference.
JAPAN
Fukushima power glitch fixed
Technicians have restored power to all cooling systems at the reactors of the tsunami-hit Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said yesterday after a blackout sparked a new crisis. Equipment in pools used to cool used fuel became fully operational from 12:12pm, about 30 hours after the blackout, TEPCO said. TEPCO stressed that the glitch was fixed before any lasting damage was caused, saying the temperatures of all the fuel pools were well below the safety limit of 65°C. The company said there was no major change in radioactivity levels at nearby spots.
TURKEY
Grenades hit state buildings
Assailants on Tuesday fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the headquarters of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party and hurled two hand grenades at the Ministry of Justice’s parking lot, slightly wounding one person, officials said. Minister of the Interior Muammer Guler said no one was injured in the attack on the party headquarters, while the spouse of a justice ministry employee was treated for a slight injury in the second assault. Erdogan had left Turkey hours earlier for a visit to Denmark. The minister said a terrorist group was responsible for the attacks, but he declined to identify it.
SOUTH AFRICA
Opposition leader bit by rat
Western Cape Premier Helen Zille was bitten by a rat outside her home in Cape Town on Tuesday. The Democratic Alliance Party leader posted a picture of her bloody toe on Twitter after the incident. When a reader asked why she did not blame the African National Congress, she replied: “Damn, why didn’t I think of that!!” However, she lost her sense of humor when someone asked if the rat was black or white, replying: “Only in SA [South Africa]!! Just a matter of time b4 someone brought race into it.”
UNITED STATES
Beach shut after seal abuse
San Diego’s mayor has ordered a two-month nighttime shutdown of a beach after cameras set up to monitor a seal colony captured people kicking, punching and sitting on top of mother seals and their pups. San Diego Mayor Bob Filner said in a statement on Tuesday that the La Jolla beach known as Children’s Pool will be closed between sunset and sunrise until May 15. The 24-hour “seal-cam” was introduced in January and equipped with night vision so researchers and the public could watch the seals give birth during pupping season. However, the camera captured people abusing and harassing the seals and driving them from their resting places.
CANADA
‘Canadian Psycho’ collapses
A former porn actor accused of murdering and dismembering a Chinese man collapsed in court on Tuesday while evidence was presented against him, witnesses and his lawyer said. Luka Rocco Magnotta, 30, asked for a break in the preliminary hearing, during which a judge must decide if there is enough evidence for a trial, then stood up and collapsed. His lawyer, Luc Leclair, said that Magnotta was “not feeling well” and was not able to continue. Proceedings were adjourned until yesterday, when Magnotta was expected to return after resting, he added. The so-called “Canadian Psycho” has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and other charges, including committing indignities to a body and harassing Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Police have said the man, who had worked as a gay porn actor and sex worker, used an ice pick to stab his 33-year-old victim before carving up his body, sexually abusing the corpse, filming the act and posting it online. The media dubbed Magnotta the “Canadian Psycho.”
POLAND
Miners rescued after quake
Nineteen miners were pulled alive and well from a copper mine yesterday after a small earthquake trapped them 600m below the surface late the previous night. It took seven hours to tunnel through collapsed rock to reach the miners, who were working at the Rudna copper mine when a small tremor trapped them there at 10:09pm on Tuesday. Two were treated for minor injuries, while the others, shaken up and covered with grime after a grueling night, were on their way home. Families of the miners, who gathered near the mine, cheered when the mine’s operator, KGHM, announced that all 19 were found alive and were slowly being taken out through a hole dug by the rescuers.
UNITED STATES
Man, 83, kills wife, self
An elderly man who shot and killed his 83-year-old wife in an eastern Pennsylvania hospice unit on Tuesday, and then committed suicide, had apparently decided he could not live without her, authorities said. Staff members heard gunshots on the fourth floor of Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown shortly after 1am. When they entered the room where the shots were fired, they found Mildred Osman dead in her bed, along with the body of 86-year-old Elwood Osman, Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin said. James Geiger, senior vice president of the hospital, was asked at a news conference if Mildred Osman’s shooting death appeared to be a “mercy killing.” “It’s a love story,” Geiger responded. “The elderly gentleman could not bear to see his wife suffering, and the family, I believe, have observed that he just could not envision living without her.”
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