PAKISTAN
Polio vaccine drive starts
The government yesterday began its first nationwide polio vaccination campaign for the year in an effort to eradicate the crippling disease by the end of the year, health official Rana Safdar said. The nation is one of three in the world where polio is still endemic. The other two are Afghanistan and Nigeria. However, militant threats and deep-rooted superstition have spurred many parents, particularly in areas bordering Afghanistan, to refuse to vaccinate their children. Safdar said the program, which involves 260,000 staffers, aims to vaccinate 39.2 million under-five children across the nation, except for some areas badly hit by winter rains. The campaign will try to include children who move across the Afghan-Pakistan border. Last year, the nation reported only eight new polio cases.
AFGHANISTAN
Car bomb kills 12
The Afghan Taliban yesterday killed at least 12 security force members in a car bomb attack on a military base in the central province of Maidan Wardak, officials said. Two gunmen who tried to enter the compound were shot dead, said Mohebullah Sharifzai, spokesman for the Maidan Wardak provincial governor. “A [second] car, packed with explosives, was also discovered and defused,” he added. Provincial health director Mohammad Salem Asgharkhil said that 28 wounded members of the security forces had been taken to hospital. “Looking at the damage, the number of casualties may rise and our health team is still searching for victims,” he said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said had killed or wounded dozens.
INDIA
Intruder killed by lion
A man was mauled to death by a lion after he scaled the wall of a zoo in northern Punjab state, officials said yesterday. The man climbed the 6m wall of Chhatbir Zoo, home to four lions, on Sunday and entered the restricted area where he was attacked. Hearing his screams, the staff rushed to try and rescue him. “He was an intruder in the zoo. We took him to the hospital, but he succumbed to his injuries,” said Roshan Sunkaria from the state forest department. The animal that attacked the man was an Asiatic lion — a critically endangered species and a major tourist draw. Only about 500 exist in the wild, all in the Gir sanctuary in the western state of Gujarat. The authorities have not yet been able to contact the victim’s family. The zoo has stepped up warnings inside the premises and advised visitors to travel with an escort and keep vehicles locked.
JAPAN
Fake cops sentenced
Thieves who dressed up as police officers to con victims out of nearly 160kg of gold worth US$7 million were yesterday handed lengthy prison sentences. In 2016, the three fake cops stopped a group of men carrying briefcases with gold bars worth ¥750 million in the southern city of Fukuoka and ordered them to hand them over, telling them they knew the gold had been smuggled. Apparently taken in by the disguise, the victims gave the pretend police what they asked for and simply watched as they drove off. The Fukuoka District Court ordered “a seven-year jail term for 36-year-old Tomonori Shiraishi and five-and-a-half years in prison for Takahiro Shirane, 28, and Takumi Uchida, 26,” a court spokesman said.
CHINA
Everest climbs to be cut
The number of climbers attempting to scale Mount Everest from the north this year is to be cut by one-third as part of plans for a major cleanup on the world’s highest peak, state media reported yesterday. The number of climbers seeking to summit the world’s highest peak at 8,850m from the north is to be limited to less than 300 and the climbing season restricted to the spring, the reports said. The cleanup efforts would include the recovery of the bodies of climbers who died at more than 8,000m up the mountain, they said. Each year, about 60,000 climbers and guides visit the Chinese north side of the mountain. The government has set up stations to sort, recycle and break down garbage from the mountain, which includes cans, plastic bags, stove equipment, tents and oxygen tanks.
WEALTH
Growing gap fuels anger
Tax systems that put a high burden on the poor mean that public services are underfunded, stretching the gap between rich and poor and fueling global public anger, Oxfam International executive director Winnie Byanyima said yesterday. A new billionaire was created every two days last year, just as the poorest half of the world’s population saw their wealth decline by 11 percent, the Nairobi-headquartered charity said in a report yesterday. Governments are increasingly underfunding public services and failing to clamp down on tax dodging, said the report, as political and business leaders gather for the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “Poor people suffer twice from being deprived of basic services and also paying a higher burden of taxation,” Byanyima said in an interview.
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
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.