PAKISTAN
Four aid workers killed
Four members of a polio immunization team have been found murdered after being kidnapped in the southwest, officials said yesterday. Local militants had abducted the vaccination worker, two local tribal policemen and a driver in the Zhob District of Baluchistan Province on Saturday. “Security agencies conducted several operations to recover the polio worker and other team members and finally found their bodies in the mountains on Tuesday,” said Nazar Muhammad Khatran, a senior local administration official in Zhob. Taliban militants claim that the polio vaccination drive is a front for espionage or a conspiracy to sterilize Muslims.
BANGLADESH
Subhan to be executed
A domestic war crimes tribunal yesterday ordered the execution of a senior Islamist leader after convicting him of atrocities during the 1971 independence war, triggering violence outside the court. Three Molotov cocktails thrown by suspected anti-government activists exploded outside the courthouse in central Dhaka as Abdus Subhan, a vice president of the nation’s largest Islamist party, Jamaat-Islami, was found guilty of murder, genocide and torture. Justice Obaidul Hassan, head of the International Crimes Tribunal, handed down the sentences, saying the 79-year-old leader would be “hanged by the neck until his death.” Defense lawyers said they would appeal the verdict.
JAPAN
Elderly locked and tied
Scores of elderly people living in sheltered accommodation in Tokyo have been routinely tied to their beds or locked in their rooms, officials said yesterday. A Tokyo authority has ordered a care provider to stop the abuse of elderly people in three separate buildings, after inspectors found about 130 people being routinely restrained against their will. The health ministry said in 2001 that bodily restraints should only be used when there is no alternative means of protecting the patient and the care giver. It also said such restraints should only be temporary. “It was difficult for us to see the wrongdoing because these condominiums were not formally registered as residences for the elderly, rather the landlords had insisted that they were being rented out as regular homes,” the Tokyo official said.
INDIA
Modi to sell ‘ridiculed’ suit
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to auction a controversial suit that bears his name in gold pinstripes, which he wore at a meeting with US President Barack Obama, leading to attacks he was out of touch in a nation where many live in extreme poverty. The tailored suit, which was ridiculed by Modi’s political opponents, will be auctioned in the state of Gujarat to raise money for a project he is championing to clean the Ganges river. The auction, which started yesterday, is to last three days.
PHILIPPINES
MILF surrenders 16 rifles
The nation’s largest Muslim rebel group handed in 16 assault rifles taken from police commandos killed in a firefight last month that has jeopardized milestone peace talks, in what the group yesterday said was a show of goodwill. Forty-four police commandos were killed in the Jan. 25 firefight on Mindanao between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and members of the police Special Action Force. Mohagher Iqbal, head of the MILF peace negotiating team, said the group had tracked down the weapons and returned them to show its sincerity and commitment to the peace process.
TURKEY
Pact near on Syrian training
The US and Ankara have reached a tentative agreement to train and equip moderate Syrian opposition fighters and expect to sign the pact soon, officials said on Tuesday. The US military has said it is planning to send more than 400 troops, including special operations forces, to train Syrian moderates at sites outside Syria as part of the fight against the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Three US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the training could begin in middle of next month. The vetted Syrian fighters would be equipped with items including pickup trucks with mounted machine guns, radios and global positioning system trackers, the officials said.
FRANCE
Prosecutor seeks acquittal
A prosecutor on Tuesday called for Dominique Strauss-Kahn to be acquitted of pimping charges in a trial which has seen lurid details of the former IMF managing director’s sex life exposed in court. “Neither the judicial enquiry nor the hearing have established that Mr Strauss-Kahn is guilty” of procuring prostitutes for sex parties he attended in Paris, Brussels and Washington, prosecutor Frederic Fevre said. The economist’s notoriety “should not be a presumption of guilt,” he said. “Our legal system must take pride in never convicting someone if there is any doubt. I therefore request his acquittal, pure and simple.” Meanwhile, two ex-prostitutes who attended orgies that Strauss-Kahn went to have dropped a civil lawsuit against him, with lawyers saying they lacked enough proof to win the case.
ROMANIA
Ex-minister wants wallpaper
Former tourism minister Elena Udrea, in detention on corruption charges, has asked to be allowed to wallpaper and paint her cell walls. Udrea’s lawyer, Marius Stribulea, on Tuesday said his client wanted to renovate her current accommodation. “As you know the conditions are not the best,” he said. However, it appears her request was unnecessary. A court late on Tuesday ruled that Udrea would be put under house arrest while being investigated.
ISRAEL
Treasure trove discovered
Scuba divers have discovered the largest trove of gold coins ever found off the nation’s Mediterranean coast — about 2,000 pieces dating back more than 1,000 years, the Israel Antiquities Authority said on Tuesday. It was by pure chance that members of a diving club in Caesarea had come across the coins on the seabed of the Roman-era harbor, the authority. It said the cache weighed 9kg, but declined to put a cash value on the coins, which it said had been exposed as a result of winter storms. The coins now belong to the state.
UNITED STATES
Mayor warns snow jumpers
Boston residents overwhelmed by massive snowfalls the last month have been recording videos of themselves jumping out of windows and into snowbanks, and Mayor Marty Walsh wants them to stop. The Boston Herald reports. The mayor chastised thrill-seekers who have been filming themselves performing the frosty feat and then posting the videos on social media Web sites. “It’s a foolish thing to do, and you could kill yourself,” Walsh said. Boston city workers are struggling to clear snow-clogged streets and deal with snowbanks up to 3m high. The city has scrambled to keep roads clear after the record-breaking snowfalls.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not