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.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
RSS