MORROCCO
Politicians caught in the act
Two senior Muslim politicians have been suspended from their party, the group announced on Monday, following media reports that they were arrested in a “sexual position” on a beach. Moulay Omar Benhammad and Fatima Nejjar, both in their 60s and vice presidents of the Unity and Reform Movement, have been “suspended from all structures of the movement,” the party said in a statement issued after an emergency meeting of its leadership. According to private Web site al-Ahdath, police detained Benhammad and Nejjar early on Saturday last week on a beach in Mohammedia, about 60km south of Rabat. They were allegedly found in a “sexual position” inside a car, it said. Nejjar, a 62-year-old widow and mother of six, faces a charge of complicity to adultery. A married 63-year-old father of seven, Benhammad faces charges of “attempted corruption” of the policemen who detained the couple, the Web site said. Some social media in Morocco have reveled in the case, posting videos of Nejjar in full Islamic headdress exhorting female students not to give in to “temptation and vice.”
JAPAN
Father kills son over exam
A father stabbed his 12-year-old son to death after complaining the boy was failing to study for a school entrance exam, media said yesterday. Kengo Satake, the boy’s 48-year-old father, told police that he “argued with his son for not studying” before a test to enter a private junior-high school, public broadcaster NHK reported. The son, named Ryota, was taken to hospital on Sunday after the stabbing, but died from loss of blood, Aichi prefectural police in the central city of Nagoya told reporters. “The father stabbed his son in the chest with a kitchen knife,” a police spokesman said, declining to provide details of the motive. The father was arrested after police received a call from hospital staff, he said. Satake reportedly told police he had stabbed his son “by mistake.”
INDIA
Man swallows 40 knives
Doctors in northern India say they have surgically removed 40 knives from the stomach of a man who had swallowed them over the past two months. The 42-year-old man is recovering in a hospital in Punjab State after undergoing surgery on Friday in which doctors removed the knives — some folded and some with exposed blades up to 18cm long. Jatinder Malhotra, a doctor who was present during the five-hour operation, said yesterday that the man, who works as a police constable, was apparently suffering from a psychiatric disorder and is now being counseled. He said the man could not explain why he swallowed the knives. Malhotra said he had never before heard of a case of a person swallowing knives.
JAPAN
Sea Shepherd deal reached
The Institute of Cetacean Research and Kyodo Senpaku, which conduct the nation’s whale hunts, say they reached a mediation agreement with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and its founder Paul Watson. Under the terms of the negotiated agreement, Sea Shepherd and Watson are prohibited from “physically attacking” Japan’s whaling vessels or crew, or approaching closer than 457m to the vessels on the high seas. The agreement settles a case brought by the Japanese institutions against Sea Shepherd at a Seattle court in 2011, in which the Japanese institutions sought an injunction from “violent behavior” of protesters which they said endangered the safety of the whaling vessels’ crew.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing