■ 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.
FLYBY: The object, appears to be traveling more than 60 kilometers per second, meaning it is not bound by the sun’s orbit, astronomers studying 3I/Atlas said Astronomers on Wednesday confirmed the discovery of an interstellar object racing through the solar system — only the third-ever spotted, although scientists suspect many more might slip past unnoticed. The visitor from the stars, designated 3I/Atlas, is likely the largest yet detected, and has been classified as a comet, or cosmic snowball. “It looks kind of fuzzy,” said Peter Veres, an astronomer with the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center, which was responsible for the official confirmation. “It seems that there is some gas around it, and I think one or two telescopes reported a very short tail.” Originally known as A11pl3Z before
US President Donald Trump’s administration on Monday accused Harvard University of violating the civil rights of its Jewish and Israeli students, and threatened to cut off all federal funding if the university does not take urgent action. Harvard has been at the forefront of Trump’s campaign against top US universities after it defied his calls to submit to oversight of its curriculum, staffing, student recruitment and “viewpoint diversity.” Trump and his allies claim that Harvard and other prestigious universities are unaccountable bastions of liberal, anti-conservative bias and anti-Semitism. In a letter sent to the president of Harvard, a federal task
‘CONTINUE TO SERVE’: The 90-year-old Dalai Lama said he hoped to be able to continue serving ‘sentient beings and the Buddha Dharma’ for decades to come The Dalai Lama yesterday said he dreamed of living for decades more, as the Buddhist spiritual leader prayed with thousands of exiled Tibetans on the eve of his 90th birthday. Thumping drums and deep horns reverberated from the Indian hilltop temple, as a chanting chorus of red-robed monks and nuns offered long-life prayers for Tenzin Gyatso, who followers believe is the 14th reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. Looking in good health, dressed in traditional maroon monk robes and a flowing yellow wrap, he led prayers — days after confirming that the 600-year-old Tibetan Buddhist institution would continue after his death. Many exiled Tibetans
BRICS leaders are to meet in Rio de Janeiro from today, with the bloc depleted by the absence of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), who is skipping the annual summit of emerging economies for the first time in 12 years. The grouping meets as its members face imminent and costly tariff wars with the US. Conceived two decades ago as a forum for fast-growing economies, the BRICS have come to be dominated by Beijing, which grew much faster and larger than the rest. China has not said why Xi would miss the summit, a first since he became president in 2013. “I expect there
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