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.
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
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