INDONESIA
US ‘suitcase killers’ arrested
The daughter of a US tourist whose battered body was found in a suitcase at a Bali hotel and her boyfriend have been arrested over the killing, police said yesterday. The body of Sheila von Wiese Mack was found on Tuesday in a suitcase in the trunk of a taxi in front of the five-star St Regis in the Nusa Dua resort area. The 62-year-old was half-naked, had suffered several wounds to the head and appeared to have put up a struggle, a doctor said. She had been staying in the hotel with her daughter, Heather, 19, and her daughter’s boyfriend, Tommy Schaefer, 21, police chief Djoko Hari Utomo said. Mack was recorded on CCTV arguing with Schaefer in the hotel lobby on Monday night, he said. The next day, the couple checked out and sent several suitcases down to a taxi, allegedly including the one containing the victim. The body was discovered when the couple failed to show up at the waiting taxi, Utomo said. They were seen on CCTV leaving the hotel at the back of the property. Police launched a hunt and found the pair at a hotel in Legian early yesterday, Utomo said. “This is murder, and we will decide from our investigation whether it is premeditated or spontaneous,” he said.
BANGLADESH
Fatal ferry’s owner arrested
The government yesterday said it has arrested the owner of a heavily overloaded river boat that sank last week, drowning scores of people. The ferry was only licensed to carry 85 passengers, but was packed with more than 200 people returning from their villages following the Eid al-Fitr holiday. Rescuers have so far recovered 48 bodies, but have not been able to locate the wreckage in the fast-flowing river. About 60 people are still missing. The government has charged A.B. Siddique Kalu and five others, including the ferry captain, with culpable homicide not amounting to murder over the disaster. If found guilty, they face up to 10 years in jail. Rescuers on Monday abandoned their search after a week of fruitless efforts amid ongoing bad weather.
SYRIA
Islamic State takes villages
Jihadists from the Islamic State group, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, have taken control of a string of villages in Aleppo Province, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said yesterday. The monitoring group said the extremists have seized six villages north of Aleppo city, not far from the Turkey border. Fighting was ongoing for control of Arshaf, another village in the area, it added. The Observatory said the militants took the villages “after fierce clashes with rebels and Islamist battalions that remained in the area after al-Nusra Front and other Islamist battalions withdrew at the end of July.” Al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda’s local branch, joined moderate and Islamist rebel groups in a coalition that began fighting the Islamic State in January and pushed it out of much of the territory it held in Aleppo Province. However, the Islamic State has been able to recapture some of that lost ground and is advancing in the area, while consolidating its hold in its stronghold of Raqa Province, as well as sweeping forward in Iraq. The Observatory said the capture of the villages was a strategic prize, because it would open the way for the Islamic State to attack the towns of Marea and Azaz. Marea is a stronghold of the Islamic Front, a coalition among those fighting the Islamic State. Azaz sits next to the border crossing with Turkey.
MEXICO
Quake rocks Oaxaca
A magnitude 5.8 earthquake has struck the southwestern state of Oaxaca. The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake struck early yesterday with its epicenter 16km west of Santiago Pinotepa near the Pacific Coast. It had a depth of 10km. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
ECUADOR
Quake strikes near Quito
Two people were killed on Tuesday after a magnitude 5.1 earthquake struck near Quito, with eight others wounded. The National Risk Control Agency said the earthquake triggered a landslide at a quarry in the Quito area that killed two people who worked there, adding that firemen were searching for three others. The mayor of Quito reported that only one person died in the landslide and that a four-year-old boy was killed in another part of the city when sacks of rice fell on top of him. The USGS said the moderate quake was only 7.7km deep.
FRANCE
Name change requested
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre has sent a letter to Minister of the Interior Bernard Cazeneuve to demand that a tiny hamlet south of Paris called “Death to Jews” be renamed. The group’s director of international affairs, Shimon Samuels, wrote to Cazeneuve saying he was “shocked to discover the existence of a village in France officially called ‘Death to Jews’ (La-mort-aux-Juifs). It is extremely shocking that this name has slipped under the radar in the 70 years that have passed since France was liberated from Nazism and the Vichy regime.” However, the deputy mayor of the village of Courtemaux, which has jurisdiction over the hamlet, dismissed the concerns. “It’s ridiculous. This name has always existed,” Marie-Elizabeth Secretand said. “No one has anything against the Jews, of course. It doesn’t surprise me that this is coming up again.”
GREECE
Mound stumps experts
Archeologists have unearthed a funeral mound dating from the time of Alexander the Great and believed to be the largest ever discovered in the nation, but are stumped about who was buried in it. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras on Tuesday described the find as “unique” after he visited the site, which dates to the era following Alexander’s death, at the ancient town of Amphipolis. The mound containing the tomb has a near-circular circumference of 497m, Samaras said. “The tomb is definitely dated to the period following the death of Alexander the Great [in 323 BC], but we cannot say who it belonged to,” supervising archeologist Katerina Peristeri told Mega channel. Experts believe it could have belonged to a member of the royal family.
HAITI
Escaped inmate captured
Police recaptured an alleged kidnapper who escaped custody during a mass breakout that authorities believe was staged for him at a prison outside the capital, officials said on Tuesday. Clifford Brandt was taken into custody in Cornillon, near the border with the Dominican Republic, Communications Minister Rudy Heriveaux said. Brandt, the son of a prominent businessman, was in a vehicle with several other prisoners involved in the breakout, said Ed Lozama, a spokesman for Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe. Two guards were wounded in the mass breakout on Sunday, in which 329 prisoners escaped. Brandt had been in custody since October 2012, awaiting trial over the kidnapping of the adult children of another businessman.
‘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