■ Guam
Former leader indicted
Former two-term Governor Carl Gutierrez has been indicted for allegedly using US$64,000 worth of government materials and personnel to build his two-story cliffside ranch. Gutierrez and former Department of Administration Director Clifford Guzman also were indicted on charges of authorizing the use of government funds to pay for thousands of private streetlights. Gutierrez, 62, served as governor from January 1995 to January last year. He and Guzman, 50, were summoned to appear in Guam Superior Court on Jan. 29.
■ Pakistan
Constitution amended
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf yesterday approved a constitutional amendment that endorses his right to stay on as leader until 2007 and paves the way for him to seek a vote of confidence on his presidency from lawmakers, officials said. The bill, which has already been adopted by the parliament, will now become part of the country's 1973 constitution, they said. The amendment was part of a deal struck last week between the ruling coalition and the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), an alliance of six Islamic parties, to end a power tussle between the government and the opposition which had deadlocked parliament for more than a year.
■ The Philippines
Police kill kidnappers
Philippine police killed four suspected kidnappers of a 2-year-old boy after a car chase yesterday, officials said. The men were killed in a brief but fierce firefight in Mabitac town in the province of Laguna, south of Manila, a day after soldiers and police rescued their captive, a businessman's 2-year-old son, said Angelo Reyes, head of an anti-kidnapping force. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who has made a crackdown on kidnappings a priority, praised the rescuers of Gian Jethro Chua, who was recovered in Laguna early on Tuesday.
■ Afghanistan
US winds up operation
US forces have wound up the largest combat operation here in more than a year, a monthlong operation involving 2,000 troops across the south and east of Afghanistan. More than 100 people were detained during the operation and 10 suspected Islamic militants killed, Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Hilferty, the US military spokesman, said on Tuesday in a statement at Bagram airbase north of Kabul. He did not mention the 15 children and three adults killed in two separate bombing raids during the operation. The two raids are under investigation and findings have not been released.
■ China
Two jailed for subversion
A Chinese court sentenced an American and a New Zealander to up to five years in jail yesterday on charges of plotting to explode balloons by remote control above Tiananmen Square and scatter pro-democracy leaflets. The Beijing No 2 Intermediate People's Court handed a five-year prison sentence to Chinese-born New Zealand businessman Sun Gang, 44, and a three-and-a-half-year term to Taiwan-born US national Lan Yupeng, the official Xinhua news agency said. The court ruled the men should be deported, Xinhua said, adding that they were also fined unspecified amounts on charges of inciting subversion.
■ United States
Ashcroft out of probe
US Attorney General John Ashcroft on Tuesday stepped aside from the politically charged investigation into the leak of an undercover CIA officer's name in the build-up to the Iraq war, as the Justice Department named a special prosecutor to lead the probe. Deputy Attorney General James Comey said Ashcroft decided "in an abundance of caution" to step aside from the investigation. Comey named the US attorney in Chicago, Patrick Fitzgerald, to lead the investigation into who disclosed the identity of a CIA officer whose husband had challenged President George W. Bush's claims about Iraq's weapons threat.
■ United States
BSE measures announced
US Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman announced
on Tuesday a series of new measures targeting bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) after the discovery of the first case of mad cow disease in the US last week. New measures call for removing from the human food chain those products obtained from so-called "downer" animals that are too sick to walk to the slaughterhouse on their
own, Veneman said. Other measures cover how slaughterhouses should handle cattle brains and other nervous system tissues to prevent meat from being contaminated.
■ United States
Officials ban ephedra
The Bush administration announced on Tuesday that it was banning the herbal weight-loss supplement ephedra because of concerns about its health effects. The decision is the latest episode, but almost surely not the last, in a debate that has lasted for several years. Manufacturers of ephedra dispute assertions that the amphetamine-like substance is a health risk, and are likely to challenge the government ban in court. In anticipation of the action, executives of several companies that make ephedra-based products said that studies had proven that they are safe when used properly.
■ Saudi Arabia
Terror suspect surrenders
A terror suspect surrendered to police on Tuesday, while a Western diplomat said that Islamic militants who have attacked foreigners in the kingdom appear to have homed in on a new target -- senior members of the security services. The militant who turned himself in, Mansour Mohammed Ahmed Faqih, is 14th on an official list of 26 wanted terror suspects. His face was among those published in a newspaper advertisement in which the government offered US$270,000 for information leading to their arrests. Meanwhile, an explosion on Monday in Riyadh was aimed at a top official of the Interior Ministry's Mabahith branch, the kingdom's equivalent of the FBI, the diplomat said.
■ Libya
IAEA claims mandate
The UN nuclear agency does not need US help in dismantling Libya's nascent weapons program, the agency chief said on Tuesday. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is happy to receive US and British intelligence that will assist its inspectors in Libya, said Director General Mohamed ElBaradei. But the IAEA doesn't want help on the ground. "As far as I'm concerned, we have the mandate, and we intend to do it alone," he said. ElBaradei spoke a day after returning from a visit to Libya, where he and an IAEA team visited four once-secret nuclear sites in the capital, Tripoli.
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
‘VERY DIRE’: This year’s drought, exacerbated by El Nino, is affecting 44 percent of Malawi’s crop area and up to 40 percent of its population of 20.4 million In the worst drought in southern Africa in a century, villagers in Malawi are digging for potentially poisonous wild yams to eat as their crops lie scorched in the fields. “Our situation is very dire, we are starving,” 76-year-old grandmother Manesi Levison said as she watched over a pot of bitter, orange wild yams that she says must cook for eight hours to remove the toxins. “Sometimes the kids go for two days without any food,” she said. Levison has 30 grandchildren under her care. Ten are huddled under the thatched roof of her home at Salima, near Lake Malawi, while she boils
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