BRAZIL
Police kill six a day: NGO
Police killed more than 11,000 people between 2009 and last year for an average of six killings a day, a non-governmental organization (NGO) said on Tuesday. The study by the Sao Paulo-based Brazilian Forum on Public Safety said police nationwide killed 11,197 people over the past five years, while law enforcement agents in the US killed 11,090 people over the past 30 years. “The empirical evidence shows that Brazilian police make abusive use of lethal force to respond to crime and violence,” the report said. There were 416 people killed last year in Rio de Janeiro, giving it the highest per capita rate.
MEXICO
Protesters seize police chief
People furious at the massacre of 43 students torched the ruling party’s Guerrero State headquarters and briefly took a police commander prisoner on Tuesday as growing protests rocked President Enrique Pena Nieto’s government. Riot police clashed with protesters in running street battles as black smoke billowed from the Institutional Revolutionary Party building in Chilpancingo. About 1,000 people marched in the state capital before throwing firebombs at police.
MEXICO
Police wound US girl, 14
Police in the border state of Tamaulipas wounded a pregnant 14-year-old US citizen after the truck she was in failed to obey police commands to stop. The Tamaulipas State Prosecutor’s Office said late on Monday the teen and her four-month-old fetus are not in danger of dying. It said the shooting happened around midnight on a Reynosa street near the international bridge leading to Pharr, Texas. Police officers approached the girl and a boy who was driving the truck outside a convenience store and ordered them to stop. The driver took off, and police fired at the truck’s tires to stop the vehicle.
BRAZIL
Rio sets up nude beach
The people of Rio de Janiero can now go all the way. Abrico beach, an hour’s drive west of the city’s center, was officially designated the city’s first nudist site on Tuesday. “This is a courageous decision by the mayor and it will help Rio become a cultural and tourist reference point, especially with the city about to celebrate its 450th anniversary and the 2016 Olympic Games,” nudist activist Paula Nogueira said.
SWITZERLAND
Watch fetches US$21.3m
A Patek Philippe gold watch billed as the most expensive — and most complicated — in the world fetched a record US$21.3 million on Tuesday when it went under the hammer in Geneva. The sale of the “Henry Graves Supercomplication,” a handcrafted timepiece named after its original owner, a New York banker who ordered it in 1925, weighs more than 0.5kg and comprises 900 separate parts. The winning bidder will have to pay US$24 million, including commission.
GREECE
Fugitive lived as monk
A fugitive accountant preferred life as a monk over jail, holing up in monasteries for eight years before police finally tracked him down, police said on Tuesday. The 48-year-old man, convicted in absentia in 2011 of embezzling about 9 million euros (US$11.22 million) of public funds from 1995 to 2002, hid out on the remote Mount Athos Peninsula, an autonomous monastic state, where he passed himself off as a novice monk, police said. He was arrested on Monday while attempting to move to another monastery.
JAPAN
Fiery suicide in Tokyo
A man has burned himself to death in Tokyo in an apparent protest against the government’s controversial move to expand the role of the military, media reports said yesterday. The unidentified man’s body was found on Tuesday evening in Hibiya park, which sits just next to the Imperial Palace, Jiji Press news agency and the Asahi Shimbun said. Police suspect that the man set himself on fire in the park, where he left letters protesting against Tokyo’s endorsement of the right to exercise so-called “collective self-defense,” the reports said. They declined to confirm details or reports that the man filmed his self-immolation with a video camera that was placed on a nearby stand.
MOROCCO
Teen injured by husband
A teenager forced to marry her alleged rapist last year was attacked with a razor blade and beaten by him for seeking a divorce, media reported on Tuesday. The 17-year-old, only identified as Khaoula, was attacked in Marrakech on Saturday after filing for divorce, the Tel Quel weekly said, citing the AMDH independent rights group. She suffered multiple cuts which “disfigured” parts of her body and required about 40 stitches, the French-language weekly reported. “I swear that nobody will marry you after me,” Khaoula’s husband was reported to have said to her, according to several media outlets. Several NGOs have pledged to help the injured teenager seek justice, AMDH rights group leader Omar Arbib said.
JAPAN
Boy returned in dispute
The government has helped return a boy to his German home in the first such case since adopting an international treaty on cross-border child custody disputes, an official said yesterday. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it intervened in a case involving a five-year-old boy, whose Japanese mother had left her German husband and took the boy in June without the father’s consent. “In August, the father contacted us to request assistance. We located the boy, and contacted the mother,” a ministry official said. “In October, the mother took the boy to his home.” The couple would have to work out their differences in Germany, he said.
AUSTRALIA
Giant joint nixed for rally
Pro-cannabis supporters planning to rally at the G20 summit in Brisbane have been stopped from taking their giant inflatable joint, but said they plan to still push for medical marijuana. The HEMP Embassy, based in Nimbin, New South Wales, had planned to bring its 10m joint to the site near the G20 talks this weekend. “It’s a really good prop, but they [police] said they would confiscate it if we took it,” spokesman Michael Balderstone said on Tuesday, adding that police thought the prop was too big. Balderstone said the group would take inflatable 1m reefers to their rally instead.
PAKISTAN
Brothers kill mother, sisters
Two brothers were arrested on Tuesday for killing their mother and two teenage stepsisters after accusing them of adultery, police said. The brothers, in their early 30s, were detained after their father reported the incident in Lahore. “Shaban Ahmed, father of the accused, reported the incident to the police saying his sons have killed his wife, Sughra, 50 years old, and his daughters Muqadas, 18, and Amina, 16,” local police official Mohammad Ayub said.
‘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