UNITED KINGDOM
Sudanese granted asylum
A Sudanese man who was arrested after walking through the 50km Channel Tunnel from France to England has been granted asylum, lawyers said on Monday. Abdul Rahman Haroun, 40, was detained in August in Folkestone. Police said Haroun had slipped past officers at the tunnel entrance and dodged hundreds of surveillance cameras before being spotted by British security guards. He was charged with obstructing a railway engine or carriage under a 19th-century law — the Malicious Damage Act. Haroun’s caseworker, Sadie Castle of law firm Kent Defence, said the government granted him asylum on Dec. 24. At a court hearing on Monday, a lawyer said prosecutors were considering whether to drop the charge in light of the decision. Haroun, who has been detained since his arrest, was released on bail until a Jan. 18 hearing.
POLAND
Death camp visitors hit high
A record 1.72 million people visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp last year, according to the museum at the site. In 2014, the site drew 1.53 million visitors. Last year, about 425,000 Poles toured the complex, while foreign visitors, included 220,000 Britons, 141,000 Americans and 93,000 Germans, as well as tens of thousands of others from Italy, Spain, Israel, France and elsewhere. There was also a marked increase in the number of visitors from South America and North America last year compared with 2014.
EL SALVADOR
Murders spike 70 percent
Authorities report that murders spiked by nearly 70 percent last year, resulting in a sky-high homicide rate that could make it the world’s most violent nation. National Police director Mauricio Ramirez Landaverde on Monday said that the nation officially registered at least 6,657 homicides last year, up from 3,942 the previous year. The overall homicide rate was 104 per 100,000 inhabitants. That puts the country in a position to take over Honduras’ title of murder capital of the world.
AUSTRIA
Police divers find body
Police divers searching a lake one day after recovering two suitcases containing parts of a woman’s body found the submerged body of a man in the same waters on Monday. Police official Gerhard Haag said the body was retrieved from the bottom of the Traunsee near the lakeside town of Gmunden close to the location where the suitcases were discovered on Sunday. One hand of the male victim was secured to a weighed-down bag, keeping him submerged, Haag said. Police earlier said the remains in the suitcases were of a woman about 70. Local media outlets reported the head of the woman was missing.
UNITED STATES
Police officer bailed
A police officer who shot dead a black motorist in South Carolina has been released on US$500,000 bail, the Post and Courier newspaper reported on Monday. Michael Slager, who was dismissed from the North Charleston police force after the incident, had been held in jail since his arrest in April last year for killing 50-year-old Walter Scott. “The decision was met with gasps from Scott’s family and with tears from Michael Slager’s wife and parents, who appeared together for the first time in the downtown Charleston courtroom,” the report said. Scott was shot in the back five times as he tried to run away from Slager on April 4 after being pulled over, reportedly for a broken brake light.
CHINA
Bus arson suspect arrested
Police arrested a man suspected of starting a bus fire yesterday that killed 17 people, the official People’s Daily said via its microblog. Flames engulfed the bus in front of a furniture store in Helan County in the northern region of Ningxia shortly after 7am. Thirty-two people were injured. Police “surrounded and seized” the suspected arsonist after a manhunt, the paper said.
AFGHANISTAN
Mazar-i-Sharif siege over
A police officer yesterday said that special forces have ended the standoff with three gunmen holed up near an Indian consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif and killed all the attackers after a 24-hour gunbattle. The standoff began on Sunday night when three gunmen tried to storm the consulate, then retreated into an adjacent, four-story building. Sarwar Hussaini, a police spokesman in Balkh Province, said that the standoff ended late on Monday night. Ten people were wounded during the clashes, including five civilians who got caught in the crossfire.
AUSTRALIA
Robert Stigwood dies
Music mogul Robert Stigwood, who managed the BeeGees at the height of their fame and guided musician Eric Clapton’s successful solo career while producing stage musicals and films, has died aged 81, friends said yesterday. The announcement of his death was made on Facebook by Spencer Gibb, a son of BeeGees’ member Robin Gibb. “I would like to share the sad news with you all, that my godfather, and the longtime manager of my family, Robert Stigwood, has passed away,” Spencer Gibb wrote. Further details about his death were not available.
KYRGYZSTAN
Penis-joke Briton expelled
A British employee of the nation biggest gold mine, detained by police after comparing a national dish to a horse penis, was told on Monday to leave the country within 24 hours for working without an official permit. Michael Mcfeat had posted a comment saying that his colleagues were lining for their “special delicacy, the horse’s penis” at New Year celebrations. The dish in question is a sausage made from horse meat and intestines. A court found that Mcfeat had no work permit and ruled that he must be deported within 24 hours.
JAPAN
Final New Year sale held
A sushi boss yesterday paid more than US$117,000 for a giant bluefin tuna as Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market held its last New Year auction ahead of a move to newer quarters. Bidding stopped at a ¥14 million for the enormous 200kg fish, three times higher than last year’s sale, but still far below a record ¥155.4 million paid by a sushi chain operator in 2013. The New Year auction is a traditional feature at Tsukiji, where bidders pay way over the odds for the prestige of buying the first fish of the year. Yesterday’s winner, Kiyoshi Kimura, president of the firm behind the popular Sushi-Zanmai restaurant chain, said he was “glad to make a winning bid in the last New Year auction at Tsukiji.”
AUSTRALIA
Hoverboard sparks fire
A family’s Melbourne home was gutted when a hoverboard caught fire as it was charging, officials said yesterday. Authorities said the hoverboard — a Christmas gift — was plugged into the wall in a young girl’s bedroom when it ignited. The family were able to escape after a smoke alarm alerted them to the danger, but the house was severely damaged.
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