JAPAN
Osaka mayor to step down
Controversial Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto is to step down and seek re-election in a bid to prove he has public support for a plan to reform local government. Hashimoto, who doubles as co-head of the Japan Restoration Party, has long championed merging Osaka’s prefectural and municipal governments, claiming it would cut out unnecessary layers of bureaucracy. A panel of representatives of the Osaka Prefectural Government and Municipal Government on Friday last week rejected plans to speed up the integration, prompting his decision to go over their heads to the electorate.
SOUTH KOREA
Lawmaker tried for sedition
Prosecutors yesterday demanded a 20-year jail term for a leftist lawmaker on trial for allegedly plotting an armed revolt in support of North Korea. Prosecutors also asked judges to strip United Progressive Party Legislator Lee Seok-ki of his civic rights for 10 years following his release from prison. The sedition charges leveled against Lee are rarely used, especially against a sitting legislator. After parliament voted to lift his immunity from arrest, Lee, 52, was charged in September last year with plotting an insurrection to overthrow the government. The prosecution is also seeking jail terms of up to 15 years for six other party members being tried on similar charges.
SOUTH KOREA
Reunion talks date proposed
The government yesterday said North Korea has agreed to hold talks on arranging reunions of families separated by the Korean War for the first time in more than three years. Pyongyang last month agreed to restart the reunions and asked the South to pick the date. Seoul chose Feb. 17 to Feb. 22 and proposed working-level talks to discuss the reunions, but the North did not respond until yesterday, when it broke a week-long silence to send a message proposing the talks take place either tomorrow or Thursday at a border village, according to the Ministry of Unification and Pyongyang’s state media. Seoul said that it preferred tomorrow, the ministry said.
YEMEN
Attacks deepen tribal unrest
Shiite Huthi rebels have overrun strongholds of powerful tribes in the north of the country, witnesses said on Sunday, in a major advance following a month of combat that has killed scores of people. The Huthis seized Huth Town and Khamri Village — the seat of the Hashid tribal chief — as tribal defense lines crumbled, local sources and witnesses said. Tribal chief sheikh Hussein al-Ahmar ordered his fighters to evacuate his family’s farm in Khamri and set it ablaze, witnesses said. In another indication of the growing unrest, a mortar shell was fired overnight in the direction of the French embassy, while a car bomb exploded meters away in Sana’a’s diplomatic quarter, a police source said yesterday. “The two attacks happened after midnight. There were no victims,” the source said.
INDIA
Men burned for cattle: police
Four men were burned to death in a West Bengal State village as suspected punishment for stealing cattle from a rival gang, a police officer said yesterday. The four charred bodies were found close to the border with Bangladesh on Sunday evening, said Jagmohan, police commissioner of nearby Siliguri City. Two of the bodies were found inside a burned van also containing one of the suspected stolen cows, while the other two were found nearby, Jagmohan, who uses one name, told reporters.
UNITED STATES
Philip Seymour Hoffman dies
Philip Seymour Hoffman, winner of an Academy Award for his title role in the film Capote, was found dead in his Manhattan apartment on Sunday in what a New York police source described as an apparent drug overdose. Hoffman, 46, was discovered unresponsive on the bathroom floor of his Greenwich Village apartment by police responding to a 911 call, and Emergency Medical Service workers declared him dead at the scene, the New York City police said in a statement. A police spokesman said investigators found Hoffman with a syringe in his arm and recovered two small plastic bags in the apartment containing a substance suspected of being heroin. Hoffman, who is survived by three children with his partner, Mimi O’Donnell, had detailed his struggles with substance abuse in the past. Hoffman won the Best Actor Oscar for the 2005 film Capote, in which he played writer Truman Capote. He also received three Academy Award nominations as best supporting actor for The Master last year, Doubt in 2009 and Charlie Wilson’s War in 2008.
UNITED STATES
Woody Allen denies abuse
Film director Woody Allen said Dylan Farrow’s allegations of child molestation “untrue and disgraceful.” Allen’s publicist, Leslee Dart, said in an e-mail on Sunday that Allen had read Dylan Farrow’s open letter, published online on Saturday by the New York Times, claiming she was sexually assaulted when she was seven by her then adoptive father. “Mr. Allen has read the article and found it untrue and disgraceful,” Dart said. Allen’s lawyer, Elkan Abramowitz, added: “It is tragic that after 20 years, a story engineered by a vengeful lover resurfaces after it was fully vetted and rejected by independent authorities. The one to blame for Dylan’s distress is neither Dylan nor Woody Allen.’’ Dylan Farrow claimed that in 1992, at the family’s Connecticut home, Allen led her to a “dim, closet-like attic’” and “then he sexually assaulted me.” Allen was investigated on child molestation claims for the 1992 accusation, but was never charged.
RUSSIA
Release prisoners: protesters
Thousands of demonstrators marched through Moscow on Sunday to demand the government free eight prisoners jailed after a 2012 protest against President Vladimir Putin. There was heavy security for the march, with hundreds of police lining the route from Pushkin Square to Turgenev Square, while a helicopter hovered overhead. Police said the march attracted 2,000 protesters, but organizers put the number of participants at 10,000. Prosecutors are seeking jail sentences of five to six years for the protesters.
EL SALVADOR
Ex-guerrilla leads polling
Former left-wing guerrilla commander Salvador Sanchez Ceren had a strong lead in the presidential election on Sunday, heading into a run-off vote well positioned to defeat a conservative rival, former San Salvador mayor Norman Quijano. Sanchez Ceren had 49 percent support with votes from more than 94 percent of polling booths. Quijano had 38.9 percent of the vote.
COSTA RICA
Polling leads to runoff
Voters sent former San Jose mayor Johnny Araya and opposition leader Luis Guillermo Solis to an April 6 runoff after neither candidate received enough votes in Sunday’s election to win the presidency outright. With 69 percent of votes counted, Solis of the Citizen Action Party had 30.6 percent to 29.8 percent for Araya.
‘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