AFGHANISTAN
Gunmen kidnap official
Gunmen abducted the deputy public works minister in Kabul yesterday, officials said, a grim reminder of the insecurity plaguing the nation as most foreign troops prepare to withdraw at the end of the year. Public Works Deputy Minister Ahmad Shah Wahid was on his way to work when five gunmen ran his car off the road in northern Kabul, dragged him into their four-wheel-drive vehicle and sped away, police chief of investigations Gul Agha Hashim said. The armed men allegedly shot and wounded Wahid’s driver when he tried to drive away to safety, Ministry of Public Works spokesman Soheil Kakar said. It was not immediately clear who was behind the abduction.
CHINA
Health scam suspects held
Authorities have detained 160 suspected members of a criminal group in Shanghai after the group reportedly swindled patients by luring them to fake medical clinics and selling them overpriced drugs, Shanghai police said yesterday. The group reportedly cheated more than 500 victims out of 1.7 million yuan (US$273,400), reportedly employing corrupt doctors to inflate drug prices and prescribe large amounts of medicines to patients, the city’s police department said in a posting on its official microblog. Corruption in the nation’s healthcare system is said to be rife, with a scarcity of doctors and bribery pushing up the cost of care and creating tension between healthcare workers and patients. More than 600 Shanghai police launched a sting operation on April 2, after seven months of investigation, detaining 160 suspects in raids around the city and seizing crates of medicine and fake firearms, the statement said. The group would allegedly lure patients into four fraudulent clinics by placing people at hospitals and metro stations to praise the quality of the care. Unqualified doctors would then allegedly sell them prescription medicines at prices often inflated to more than 10 times the real value.
PAKISTAN
Cannibal arrested again
Police re-arrested a convicted cannibal on Monday after finding a young boy’s head in his home. Mohammad Arif, 35, and his brother Mohammad Farman, 30, from the town of Darya Khan, served two years in jail for cannibalism and were released last year. Police said the two had dug up more than 100 corpses from the local graveyard and eaten them. “Residents informed police after a stench emanated from the house of the two brothers. We raided the house on Monday morning and found the head of a young boy,” district police chief Ameer Abdullah told reporters. “We have arrested one of the brothers, Mohammad Arif, and are conducting raids for the arrest of the other brother.” Police were searching nearby graveyards to see if they had been disturbed, he said.
INDIA
Neutral gender recognized
The nation’s highest court yesterday recognized the existence of a third gender that is neither male nor female, in a landmark judgement hailed by transgender people. “Recognition of transgenders as a third gender is not a social or medical issue, but a human rights issue,” Justice K.S. Radhakrishnan told the Supreme Court while handing down the ruling. The court directed state and federal governments to identify transgenders as a neutral third gender who should be granted access to the same welfare schemes as other minority groups in India. “Transgenders are citizens of this country and are entitled to education and all other rights,” Radhakrishnan said.
VENEZUELA
Kidnapped journalist freed
A journalist was freed on Monday, eight days after she was kidnapped by masked men in front of her house. Minister of the Interior Miguel Rodriguez Torres told a news conference that 3,000 people had been hunting for Nairobi Pinto, chief correspondent for the Globovision TV station, and “the police pressure played an important role” in prompting her captors to free her. He said nobody had been arrested and did not say if a ransom was paid. Rodriguez Torres said officials have not wanted to speculate about a motive for the kidnapping, adding that in addition to being a journalist, Pinto is a university law student and member of a Christian group. While kidnapping for ransom is a widespread problem, Pinto’s family said earlier they had received no messages from the abductors. Pinto herself appeared briefly alongside the minister and said she could not identify her captors because her eyes were always covered.
ITALY
Grillo’s Nazi post outrages
A blog post by a comedian who founded the anti-establishment Five-Star Movement — parliament’s third-largest party — has sparked outrage in the nation’s tiny Jewish community. Comedian Beppe Grillo on Monday posted a photograph of the gate of Auschwitz with the infamous words Arbeit macht frei (“Work makes you free”) changed to P2 macht frei, in a sarcastic reference to the shady organization of local business and political figures some equate to a “shadow government.” The blog post also parodied a work by the late Primo Levi, who survived deportation to a Nazi death camp, to criticize President Giorgio Napolitano and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Noting that Passover started on Monday, Jewish community leader Renzo Gattegna denounced the post as “shameful” and “criminal,” as did the leaders of various political parties.
BRAZIL
Forgotten baby corpses found
The bodies of 40 newborn babies and fetuses have been found abandoned in a Rio de Janeiro hospital morgue, with some having been there for years, authorities said on Monday, comparing the scene to a horror movie. Some of the small corpses had been moldering in a morgue refrigerator for as long as five years at the city-administered Pedro Ernesto Hospital. Officials also found a number of body parts which prosecutors said were probably left over from emergency amputations. “Our goal now is to give the bodies a dignified burial as soon as possible,” prosecutor Ana Cristina Huth Macedo said. The hospital is renowned for delivering high-risk births, which likely explains why so many babies would have died, she said. Hospital director Rodolfo Acatuassu Nunes told local media that the infants’ bodies had never been claimed by their parents.
FRANCE
Nazi memento auction axed
A Paris auction house has dropped plans to sell a swastika-covered box that once belonged to Adolf Hitler and dozens of other Nazi-owned objects collected as spoils from World War II, citing “political pressure.” The Vermot de Pas house on Monday canceled its planned April 26 sale of about 40 items French forces seized from Hitler’s Bavaria home in the last days of Nazi Germany in May 1945. Passports of Hermann Goering, an aviator’s watch, pictures of Hitler and silverware were among the items set to go under the block. “It was not our goal to stir a scandal,” auction house comanager Laudine de Pas said. “We were pitching this as part of the responsibility to remember, but in no way to shock or create a polemic.”
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number