PAKISTAN
Indian fishers returned
Authorities have handed over 100 detained Indian fishers to their country’s officials at the Wahga border crossing. This is the first batch of 360 fishers set for release this month. The transfer on Monday came as a goodwill gesture, aiming to defuse tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. The fishers were released on Sunday in Karachi and escorted to Lahore. Pakistan and India frequently arrest each other’s fishers on charges of illegal fishing in their territorial waters. They often languish in detention until such goodwill gestures are shown from either side.
AFGHANISTAN
Bomb kills four Americans
Three US military personnel and a US contractor were killed on Monday when their convoy hit a roadside bomb near the main US base in Afghanistan, the US forces said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. The US and NATO Resolute Support mission said that the four Americans were killed near Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, while three others were wounded in the explosion. The wounded were evacuated and are receiving medical care, they said.
KAZAKHSTAN
Leader calls snap elections
President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev yesterday called snap elections for June 9 following last month’s surprise resignation of Nursultan Nazarbayev, the Central Asian nation’s longtime ruler. “Dear compatriots... I have decided to hold snap elections on June 9, 2019,” Tokayev, who replaced Nazarbayev, said in an address on state television.
ISRAEL
French gun smuggler jailed
A court on Monday sentenced a former French consulate worker to seven years in prison for smuggling guns from the Gaza Strip after a plea bargain. Romain Franck, who worked as a driver for the consulate, went on trial after being accused of exploiting reduced security checks for diplomats to smuggle 70 pistols and two automatic rifles from the Gaza Strip to the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The Shin Bet internal security agency has said he was paid a total of around $5,500 for the guns he smuggled for a network involving several Palestinians.
ISRAEL
Jailed Palestinians fast
Palestinian officials have said that leaders of prisoners in Israeli jails have launched a hunger strike, demanding better conditions. Thirty inmates in Israeli jails have refused their meals as part of the strike, Palestinian Prisoners Club head Qadora Faris said on Monday, adding that hundreds more plan to join. The Israel Prison Service said that it is prepared for any scenario, but that it is not aware of any mass hunger strike by Palestinian inmates. At the root of the prisoner protest is an Israeli crackdown on cell phones smuggled into the prisons, and electronic jammers used to disable them.
GUINEA
Army fitness test kills five
Five young men died in fitness tests at a recruitment drive by the Guinean army over the weekend, security sources and hospital workers said on Monday. The five, aged 23 to 32, collapsed at or near the finishing line of an 8km run. Candidates must finish in the top section of the run and then do push-ups, abdominal crunches and knowledge tests to be included among the 8,400 shortlisted candidates. Unemployment and poverty in the West African state are chronic, and positions in the armed forces, police or customs can be 10 times oversubscribed.
FRANCE
Vegan activists jailed
A pair of vegan activists who vandalized butchers’ shops, slaughterhouses and restaurants have been jailed by a court in Lille. Several groups of militant vegans and vegetarians have attacked and vandalized places selling meat in the past few months, arguing that eating meat is cruel and unnecessary. A 23-year-old man and a 26-year-old woman were jailed for 10 and six months respectively for about 15 attacks between December last year and February, including breaking shop windows and attempts to set shops on fire with cans of gasoline. Two others received suspended jail terms for aiding and abetting the protests.
GREECE
Dolphin deaths spike
The Aegean Sea has seen a “very unusual” spike in dolphin deaths over the past few weeks, the Archipelagos Institute of Marine Conservation said on Monday. While it is still unclear what caused the deaths, the spike followed Turkey’s largest-ever navy drills in the region from Feb. 27 to March 8 that made constant use of sonar and practiced with live ammunition. Fifteen dead dolphins have washed up on the island of Samos and other parts of the Aegean coastline since late February, the group said. Its head of research, Anastassia Miliou, said 15 was a worryingly high number compared to “one or two” in the same period last year.
UNITED KINGDOM
Millions of eggs tossed
Consumers are throwing away 720 million eggs every year, three times more than in 2008 and at a cost of about US$182 million, Wrap, the government’s waste advisory body, said yesterday. The scale of waste has been blamed on overcautious consumers relying on best-before dates to decide if eggs are fresh enough to eat, and the growing popularity of vegetarian and “flexitarian” diets boosting overall sales of eggs. Sales of eggs were 7.2 billion last year — a 4 percent rise over 2017 — according British Egg Industry Council data. Research from the company behind the food waste app Too Good To Go found that 29 percent of consumers throw away eggs solely because they are past their best before date, even though eggs are often still good and safe to eat long after the date on the packaging has passed.
UNITED STATES
Nuclear subs to cost more
Unreliable cost estimates mean the navy might have to ask Congress to boost funding in fiscal 2021 to buy the first in its new 12-ship fleet of nuclear-armed submarines, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said. The navy’s current procurement cost estimate and design goal are suspect and require updates before those dollars are approved, the GAO said in a report issued on Monday. The Columbia-class submarine program is estimated at US$128 billion, including research and development, with US$115 billion for procurement.
UNITED STATES
Actress Mack pleads guilty
Actress Allison Mack on Monday pleaded guilty in New York City to racketeering after recruiting women to a cult-like secret society that turned followers into “slaves” branded with the leader’s initials and coerced into having sex. Mack, 36, was arrested a year ago on sex trafficking charges for getting the women to join Nxivm, a purported coaching group that forced them to have intercourse with 58-year-old leader Keith Raniere. Mack, best known for her role as Clark Kent’s friend in the television show Smallville, could face up to 40 years in prison when she is sentenced on Sept. 11.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The