INDIA
Bus crash kills 13
A bus overcrowded with Hindu pilgrims skidded into a ditch in the east of the nation, killing 13 passengers, including two children, and leaving 43 injured. Police were yesterday searching for the driver and his assistant who fled the scene, about 100km north of Kolkata. Police superintendent Kunal Agarwal said initial reports suggest the driver was drunk and traveling at high speed when he tried to take a steep turn on Friday morning and crashed. Police said the 54-seat bus was so full that some passengers were sitting on the roof. They were traveling to a Hindu temple in Mayapur, where they planned to offer prayers to the Hindu god Krisha and swim in the Ganges.
SAUDI ARABIA
Cop killer suspect detained
The security services have detained a Saudi Arabian man on suspicion of shooting dead two policemen and wounding two others in separate attacks in Riyadh on Wednesday and last month, state media reported yesterday, citing the Ministry of the Interior. Police found the weapon and car used for the shootings at the home of Rami Abdullah Thulab al-Shammari, according to a ministry statement published by state news agency SPA yesterday. Last year the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, called on sympathizers in the kingdom to assassinate members of the security services or government, non-Muslim residents and members of the Shiite Muslim minority. Al-Qaeda has also vowed to bring down Saudi Arabia’s ruling family. Although the conservative Sunni Muslim kingdom imposes a version of sharia law supported by jihadists, the ruling family are seen by some as having betrayed Islam through having strong ties with Western countries.
INDIA
Kashmiris go on strike
Kashmiris have shuttered shops and businesses in the disputed Himalayan region to protest India’s plan to build townships for Hindus who fled a rebellion in Muslim-majority areas. The Kashmiri separatists who called yesterday’s strike say the plan to house nearly 200,000 Hindus in new townships is part of a conspiracy to separate the region’s population along religious lines. Many of the Hindus, known as Pandits, had fled to Hindu-dominated areas in Jammu region or elsewhere in India in 1990. Clashes on Friday between anti-India protesters and government forces left at least 20 people injured, including a photojournalist and eight policemen in Kashmir’s main city of Srinagar.
UNITED NATIONS
Money sought for Vanuatu
The UN appealed for nearly US$20 million on Friday for victims of Cyclone Pam, which tore through the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu last month, killing 17 people and leaving about 65,000 homeless. UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the money is needed to continue basic relief efforts including providing food, safe drinking water and shelter. A UN appeal for about US$30 million was launched on March 24 to cover the needs of 166,000 cyclone-affected people for three months but Dujarric said that to date donors have given only US$10.7 million — just 36 percent. The cyclone’s winds of 270kph destroyed more than 90 percent of the archipelago’s crops, leaving a population that relies heavily on subsistence agriculture without a source of income and the possibility of long-term food insecurity.
CROATIA
Wallet, extra cash returned
A Croatian man could not believe his eyes when he received a parcel containing a wallet he misplaced 14 years ago — full of more money than he originally lost, a newspaper reported on Friday. “First I thought that someone was joking with me, so I went to check whether the money was real,” Ivica Jerkovic told the 24sata daily. “It was the best greeting for Easter,” Jerkovic said, posing with the wallet that he received last week and 1,500 Swiss francs (US$1,528.29) that were in it. The sender gave no indication of their identity. Jerkovic said he lost the wallet 14 years ago with about 2,000 Deutschmarks (US$1,000) inside that he had withdrawn from his bank account to repair the roof of his house. Jerkovic, in his 50s and from the village of Donja Moticina, believes that the person who found and eventually returned the wallet was someone who had financial problems. “I call on him to contact me. He is the best personal banker in Croatia,” Jerkovic said.
UNITED STATES
US to agents: No prostitutes
The head of the Department of Justice on Friday told agency employees — including FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration agents — not to solicit prostitutes. The memo follows a scandal in which US agents admitted to attending orgies sponsored by Latin American cartels. It said government staff should not hire sex workers even when deployed in places where such behavior is legal or tolerated. Attorney General Eric Holder said paying prostitutes “threatens the core mission” of the department, because it can lead to extortion and blackmail and can support human trafficking. Even where the sex trade is legal, Department of Justice staff are “prohibited from soliciting, procuring or accepting commercial sex,” Holder wrote.
BURKINA FASO
Ex-president’s tomb sealed
Authorities investigating the assassination of former president Thomas Sankara during a 1987 coup have sealed his tomb before attempting to identify his remains, a lawyer for his family told reporters on Friday. A magistrate from a military court ordered “placing seals on 12 tombs” of Sankara and 11 other people, mostly members of the military who died at the same time, lawyer Benewende Sankara said. “The police are keeping guard and no one is allowed to have access without authorization from the judge,” said the lawyer, who is not related to the deposed president. The seals were placed on Thursday at the Dagnoen Cemetery, east of Ouagadougou, he said.
UNITED STATES
Martian glaciers uncovered
Mars has thousands of glaciers buried beneath its surface, enough to blanket the planet with a 1.1m thick layer of ice, scientists said on Wednesday. The glaciers are in two bands in the mid-southern and mid-northern latitudes. Radar data collected by satellites orbiting Mars combined with computer models of ice flows show the planet has about 150 billion cubic meters of water locked in the ice, according to a study published in this week’s issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letter. “The ice at the mid-latitudes is therefore an important part of Mars’ water reservoir,” Nanna Bjornholt Karlsson, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute, said in a statement. “The atmospheric pressure on Mars is so low that water ice simply evaporates and becomes water vapor,” the institute said in a news release. Scientists suspect that the glaciers remained intact because they are protected under a thick layer of dust.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion