PHILIPPINES
Radio host gunned down
Gunmen shot dead a radio broadcaster on Mindanao in the second such murder in a week, police said yesterday. The killing of Michael Diaz Milo, host of a daily radio show and a program director of DXFM radio, further worsened the nations’s standing as one of the most dangerous places for journalists. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists ranks the Philippines as the third-worst in its “impunity index” of countries that fail to fight violence against the press. Milo, 34, was riding his motorcycle late on Friday in the coastal city of Tandag when men following him, also on a motorbike, shot him in the head, a police report said.
NEPAL
S Korean paraglider dies
A South Korean paraglider plunged to his death in Pokhara on Saturday after his emergency parachute failed to open, local officials said yesterday. An aviation official said the 41-year-old, who has not been named, was an experienced paraglider who had made previous trips to Pokhara. “He died yesterday while paragliding solo, when his emergency parachute failed and sent him hurling to the ground,” said Pratap Babu Tiwari, head of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal in Pokhara.
PHILIPPINES
Police barred from ‘selfies’
Policemen taking part in relief operations after Typhoon Haiyan have been banned from posting “selfies” taken in the disaster zone, a police official said yesterday. “I think that’s [selfies] being insensitive. People there are suffering from the effects of the typhoon, losing home and loved ones, yet here they are posing for pictures as if it is something enjoyable,” police community relations head Lina Sarmiento said.
JAPAN
Academics condemn new law
A controversial new state secrets law passed on Friday was condemned on Saturday as “the largest ever threat to democracy in postwar Japan” by a group of academics, Kyodo news agency said. A group of 31 academics, including Nobel Prize winners Toshihide Maskawa and Hideki Shirakawa, accused the government of threatening “the fundamental human rights and pacifist principles” established by the country’s constitution. The statement condemned the coalition led by the Liberal Democratic Party of behaving in a way that was “reminiscent of the prewar government that wrested away freedom of thought and freedom of the press” by pushing the law through both legislative chambers. The law allows government ministers to designate as a state secret information related to defense, diplomacy, counterintelligence and counterterrorism.
SUDAN
New officials named
The ruling party yesterday named as senior vice president a man once dubbed a “sinister” defender of the Islamist revolution that brought President Omar al-Bashir to power. Former interior and defense minister Bakri Hassan Saleh was named first vice president and Hassabo Mohammed Abdel Rahman as second vice president, senior party official Rabbie Abdelatti Ebaid said. Saleh was presidential affairs minister in the Cabinet that Bashir dismissed last week after the most serious split in years within his ruling National Congress Party (NCP). Abdel Rahman had been the NCP’s political secretary. Ebaid said final composition of the new Cabinet would be declared within 24 hours.
UNITED KINGDOM
South Pole race redefined
Organizers of an Antarctic charity race involving Prince Harry said on Saturday they are suspending its competitive element because of harsh conditions, but plan to continue the journey to the South Pole. Harry, 29, is a member of one of three teams involving injured soldiers that set off last week on the 320km Walking with the Wounded South Pole Challenge. Expedition director Ed Parker said the teams were experiencing “a higher degree of stress” than expected and will no longer race one another, but travel and camp together. He said the teams would now be driven for part of the route and then finish the final 112km to the pole on foot, likely within a week.
ISRAEL
Minister moots annexation
Minister of the Economy Naftali Bennett said yesterday that the nation should annex parts of the West Bank under its full military control where most Jewish settlers live. “I favor implementation of Israeli sovereignty over the zone where 400,000 [settlers] live and only 70,000 Arabs,” the head of the Jewish Home religious party in the ruling coalition said. Bennett also ridiculed the US-brokered peace talks between Israel and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose writ covers the West Bank, but not Gaza, which is ruled by the Islamist movement Hamas. “This is all a joke. It’s as if we’re discussing the purchase of a car with only half of its owners,” he told public radio.
UNITED STATES
Veteran returns home
An 85-year-old US veteran detained in North Korea for several weeks returned home on Saturday to applause from supporters and the embrace of his family. Merrill Newman emerged into the international terminal at San Francisco’s airport smiling, accompanied by his son and holding the hand of his wife amid applause from supporters. He spoke briefly to the assembled media, declining to answer any questions or discuss his ordeal. “I’m delighted to be home,” he said. “It’s been a great homecoming. I’m tired, but ready to be with my family.” He also thanked the Swedish embassy in Pyongyang and the US embassy in Beijing for helping to secure his release.
ITALY
Hill lit up for Christmas
A picturesque medieval town on Saturday turned on a giant light installation known as the “World’s Biggest Christmas Tree.” Hundreds of onlookers watched as a priest used a tablet computer to switch on the display on a hill above the town of Gubbio in the Umbria region. The “tree” is made up of about 1,000 multicolored lights arranged across a hillside above Gubbio and stretches to a height of 750m and a maximum width of 450m. The shooting star at the top of the hill is made up of 250 lights and covers an area of more than 1,000m2.
NIGERIA
Farmers turning to drugs
Most farmers have abandoned growing food in favor of cannabis in a bid to become instant millionaires, the country’s anti-narcotics agency said on Saturday. In a statement, National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) chairman Ahmadu Giade said: “It is sad and disturbing that most farmers are now abandoning food and economic crops for cannabis.” Last year, the NDLEA arrested 8,052 suspected drug traffickers, including 542 women, it said. Giade said that more than 1,400 hectares of land was used last year for cannabis plantation. “This 1,404.27 hectares of land could have changed the fortunes of our agricultural sector,” he said.
DISASTER: The Bangladesh Meteorological Department recorded a magnitude 5.7 and tremors reached as far as Kolkata, India, more than 300km away from the epicenter A powerful earthquake struck Bangladesh yesterday outside the crowded capital, Dhaka, killing at least five people and injuring about a hundred, the government said. The magnitude 5.5 quake struck at 10:38am near Narsingdi, Bangladesh, about 33km from Dhaka, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. The earthquake sparked fear and chaos with many in the Muslim-majority nation of 170 million people at home on their day off. AFP reporters in Dhaka said they saw people weeping in the streets while others appeared shocked. Bangladesh Interim Leader Muhammad Yunus expressed his “deep shock and sorrow over the news of casualties in various districts.” At least five people,
LEFT AND RIGHT: Battling anti-incumbent, anticommunist sentiment, Jeanette Jara had a precarious lead over far-right Jose Antonio Kast as they look to the Dec. 14 run Leftist candidate Jeannette Jara and far-right leader Jose Antonio Kast are to go head-to-head in Chile’s presidential runoff after topping Sunday’s first round of voting in an election dominated by fears of violent crime. With 99 percent of the results counted, Jara, a 51-year-old communist running on behalf of an eight-party coalition, won 26.85 percent, compared with 23.93 percent for Kast, the Servel electoral service said. The election was dominated by deep concern over a surge in murders, kidnappings and extortion widely blamed on foreign crime gangs. Kast, 59, has vowed to build walls, fences and trenches along Chile’s border with Bolivia to
DEATH SENTENCE: The ousted leader said she was willing to attend a fresh trial outside Bangladesh where the ruling would not be a ‘foregone conclusion’ Bangladesh’s fugitive former prime minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday called the guilty verdict and death sentence in her crimes against humanity trial “biased and politically motivated.” Hasina, 78, defied court orders that she return from India to attend her trial about whether she ordered a deadly crackdown against the student-led uprising that ousted her. She was found guilty and sentenced to death earlier yesterday. “The verdicts announced against me have been made by a rigged tribunal established and presided over by an unelected government with no democratic mandate,” Hasina said in a statement issued from hiding in India. “They are biased and politically motivated,” she
It is one of the world’s most famous unsolved codes whose answer could sell for a fortune — but two US friends say they have already found the secret hidden by Kryptos. The S-shaped copper sculpture has baffled cryptography enthusiasts since its 1990 installation on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Virginia, with three of its four messages deciphered so far. Yet K4, the final passage, has kept codebreakers scratching their heads. Sculptor Jim Sanborn, 80, has been so overwhelmed by guesses that he started charging US$50 for each response. Sanborn in August announced he would auction the 97-character solution to K4
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