NIGERIA
Weapons-laden plane seized
Airport authority and security officials say they have seized an aircraft loaded with at least one military helicopter and heavy weapons that made an unscheduled landing at Kano airport. Security agents said they detained five Ukrainian crew members who said the plane was flying from Bangui in Central African Republic, to N’Djamena, the capital of Chad. Kano is far northwest of that air route. The airport authority confirmed yesterday that a Russian-made Antonov transport plane was seized on Saturday. The official PR Nigeria news agency said the plane carried one helicopter, but security officers said the cargo included two helicopters, rocket launchers and machine guns. They spoke anonymously because of the topic’s sensitivity.
UNITED KINGDOM
Breastfeeding protest held
Several dozen breastfeeding women have protested outside a luxury London hotel where a mother was asked to cover up with a napkin as she fed her baby. Louise Burns said she felt humiliated by staff at Claridge’s in the incident last week. The group Free to Feed organized the “nurse-in” on Saturday outside the hotel in the upmarket Mayfair District. The group’s founder, Emily Slough, said such incidents discourage women from breastfeeding. “We’re here to challenge that stigma and show women it’s normal and natural,” she said. Claridge’s has said it embraces breastfeeding, but requests that women are “discreet” toward other guests. Nigel Farage, leader of the Euro-skeptic party UKIP, drew criticism after he said on Friday that hotels had the right to ask breastfeeding women to “perhaps sit in the corner.”
ISRAEL
New war probes opened
The military says it has opened eight new criminal investigations into cases involving Palestinian civilian casualties in this summer’s war in the Gaza Strip. Saturday night’s announcement appears to be a further attempt to head off international investigations into the military’s conduct during the 50-day conflict. More than 2,100 Palestinians — mostly civilians — were killed in the fighting, according to Palestinian and UN estimates.
GREECE
Author thought slain
Acclaimed author Menis Koumandareas was found apparently murdered on Saturday in his central Athens home, authorities said. He was 83. Though his cause of death was not yet determined, police said the author had wounds to his neck and face, and showed evidence of asphyxiation. Investigators believe Koumandareas went with friends to a cafe in his neighborhood on Friday evening. According to media reports, he excused himself at one point, saying he had to return to his apartment. Koumandareas wrote about 20 novels, short-story collections and essays starting in the 1960s, and he twice won the state prize for novels. “The tragic death of Menis Koumandareas deprives Greek literature of one of its greatest authors,” Minister of Culture Kostas Tasoulas said in a statement. “Over the past half-century, Koumandareas has expressed with his unparalleled sensitivity and personal style the hopes of contemporary man and society.” Known also for translating Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Koumandareas drew sober portraits in his works Koula and the Glass Factory of post-war Greek society with a focus on Athens’ middle class and shopkeepers.
BRAZIL
Sao Paulo hit by protests
About 5,000 demonstrators on Saturday marched through downtown Sao Paulo against government corruption and the recent re-election of President Dilma Rousseff. The march, widely championed by opposition supporters, is the fifth of its kind in the weeks following Rousseff’s Oct. 26 re-election to a second four-year term. Demonstrators carrying signs calling for a coup broke away from the main march and took an alternate path after several minutes of tension, according to police, who said the group totaled about 400 people. One of the march’s organizers, the group VemPraRua, translated in English as “come down to the streets,” had sent out a call for a peaceful protest after supporters in favor of a return to the country’s former military regime showed up in previous marches. Protesters, who numbered about 5,000 according to police, had the support of defeated former presidential candidate Aecio Neves, who posted a video urging participation. “We’ve already said the Petrobras scandal was the biggest corruption case in the history of Brazil, but the list is growing and we are learning it was not only at Petrobras,” Neves said. Rousseff’s government is mired in a huge corruption scandal at state-owned oil giant Petrobras that has already led to the arrests of top businessmen amid claims that dozens of politicians, chiefly Rousseff allies, received massive kickbacks on contracts.
UNITED STATES
Probe begins Pluto study
After nine years and a journey of 4.8 billion kilometers, NASA’s New Horizons robotic probe awoke from hibernation on Saturday to begin an unprecedented mission to study the icy dwarf planet Pluto and other worlds in the Kuiper Belt. A pre-set alarm roused New Horizons at 3pm on Saturday, though ground control teams did not receive confirmation until just after 9:30pm. New Horizons is now so far away that radio signals traveling at the speed of light take four hours and 25 minutes to reach Earth. The scientific observation of Pluto, its entourage of moons and other bodies begins on Jan. 15, program managers said. The closest approach is expected on July 14. Pluto lies in the Kuiper Belt, a region of icy mini-planets orbiting the sun beyond Neptune that are believed to be leftover remains from the formation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. It is the last unexplored region of the solar system. Since its discovery in 1930, Pluto has been a mystery. Scientists struggled to explain why a planet with a radius of just 1,190km — about half the width of the US — could come to exist beyond the giant worlds of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
UNITED STATES
‘Batmobile’ sold at auction
The original “Batmobile” fetched US$137,000 at auction on Saturday, a small fraction of the US$4.2 million that a buyer paid last year for another version built for the television show that aired during the 1960s. It was the first time that the 1963 Batmobile, a replica of the sleek black ride used by the DC Comics superhero, was up for auction since it was cast off and forgotten decades ago, according to Dallas-based Heritage Auctions, which handled the sale. Information about the buyer was not immediately available. “This is a great piece of lost pop culture and Americana,” Heritage Auctions director of entertainment and music Margaret Barrett said. “There is a lot of interest in it.” The car was put up for auction by Toy Car Exchange LLC, an online marketplace for collectible cars, which bought it and had it restored to pristine condition, Barrett said.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was