■ Indonesia
Official caught buying drug
A top Indonesian religious affairs official was arrested for alleged possession of crystal methamphetamine, police said yesterday. Burhanuddin Mamasta, head of the religious affairs bureau at the ministerial-level state secretariat, was nabbed on Monday for allegedly buying the drug at a Jakarta nightspot, a city police spokesman said. Mamasta was travelling in a car with his 26-year-old date and a male friend when he slammed the vehicle into a police patrol car after trying to elude anti-narcotics policemen, the spokesman said.
■ China
Schooling receives boost
China will spend 218 billion yuan (US$27 billion) on rural education over the next five years, part of a drive to improve schooling in the countryside and narrow the gap with booming coast areas. The fund would be jointly provided by central and local governments, after the decision by China's State Council, a report said. Currently, rural schools owe their teachers more than 10 billion yuan in back pay, and failure to pay teachers salaries has resulted in a severe shortage of qualified teachers in the countryside.
■ South Korea
Indicted by phone
Prosecutors will start telling people they have been indicted via text messages, an official said on Monday. In a country where about 75 percent of the population carries mobile phones, prosecutors felt it was time to move away from sending legal notices on paper and send them electronically instead, said Lee Young-pyo, an administrative official. The indictments by text messages are not intended to take people by surprise. "People will receive a text message of a legal notice only after they apply for the service," he said.
■ Italy
Man sues train company
A commuter who says that repeated delays on the Italian rail network are making his life a misery is planning to sue the train company for allegedly causing him "existential damage." Mauro Brunetti, a teacher who travels by rail every day to his job in a school in Savona, says he is so exasperated by the constant uncertainty of whether his train will arrive on time that he sometimes wonders if his life has any value or meaning. The failings of local train services have been making his life impossible and affecting his sense of self, he said. While researching recent court cases, he found references to people sustaining "existential damage" as a result of the behavior of another person or legal entity and he decided he could apply the same arguments to Trenitalia, the national rail group.
■ Germany
Thief busted at police party
Police in Berlin made their easiest arrest of the year at their annual Christmas party, after spotting a man rummaging through the pockets of their coats in the cloakroom. Officers of the Federal Police criminal investigations unit said the unlucky pickpocket had not known that the revelers in a Berlin brewery were law enforcers. "He was definitely surprised," said a police spokesman in Berlin. "He did not realize who he was dealing with." Confronted with 35 officers, the 45-year-old Albanian, who police said held a forged passport and was wanted for other offences, offered no resistance.
■ United Kingdom
Ambassador goofs again
The US embassy in London was forced to issue a correction on Monday to an interview given by the ambassador, Robert Tuttle, in which he claimed the US would not fly suspected terrorists to Syria, which has one of the worst torture records in the Middle East. A statement acknowledged media reports of a suspect taken from the US to Syria. Torture is banned in the US but the CIA has been engaged in a policy of rendition, flying terrorist suspects to countries in the Middle East and other parts of the world where torture is commonplace.
■ France
Village inherits fortune
Inhabitants of a small village in northwest France were on Monday debating how to spend a fortune left to it by one of its sons who made his money on the other side of the world. Jean Kerfers died earlier this year at Noumea in the Pacific Ocean archipelago of New Caledonia. He had left the village after World War II to work in Australia. He was 80 and childless and his remains were buried in Noumea. He bequeathed to his native village of Mael-Crahaix, population 1,580, in the middle of Brittany a legacy of 1.4 million euros (US$1.65 million).
■ France
Army faces genocide probe
The French army has been put under official investigation on charges of having taken part in the Rwandan genocide. Despite official attempts to block the move, a military court is to look into claims that soldiers serving as part of Operation Turquoise in Rwanda not only failed to stop the killing but participated in the slaughter of about 800,000 people. Six Rwandans who survived the 1994 genocide have brought the claim of "complicity to genocide and/or crimes against humanity" against French forces. The military court dismissed four of them but is focusing on the cases of two Rwandans.
■ United States
Surfer's punch deters shark
A surfer saved his leg -- and possibly his life -- when he punched a great white shark that had latched onto him in the nose, ABC news reported on Monday. Brian Anderson, 31, was surfing on Saturday off the coast of the northwestern state of Oregon when he felt something grab his leg. Anderson turned around and punched the shark in the nose. "I acted on instinct," Anderson told ABC news. The shark let go, and despite losing blood Anderson made it back to shore, where he tied his wound as he waited for an ambulance. "I wanted to get to shore as soon as I could. The thought crossed my mind that I might not make it back in," he told ABC. Anderson, who is in the hospital and is expected to fully recover, said he learned about sharks from television shows. "I'll go back out, eventually," he said, adding: "It probably will be awhile."
■ United States
Thieves take man for a ride
Two women suspected of shoplifting at a Kmart store had their getaway foiled by a man who clung to their car's windshield wipers as they sped away. Michael Cornwell, 30, his fiancee and his mother were going into a Kmart about 10:30pm on Friday when two women ran from the store chased by employees. Cornwell stepped in front of their car and told the women to stop. After he ignored the driver's demand to move, the driver bumped Cornwell twice with the car before he jumped on the hood and she accelerated, according to police. "I was just hanging on for dear life," Cornwall said. He said he hung on for about 1.6km -- at what he estimated to be 113kph-129 kph -- before the driver pulled into a mobile home park and the women fled. The suspects were arrested and charged with aggravated robbery, felonious assault and theft.
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
SHOW OF SUPPORT: The move showed that aggression toward Greenland is a question for Europe and Canada, and the consequences are global, not just Danish, experts said Canada and France, which adamantly oppose US President Donald Trump’s wish to control Greenland, were to open consulates in the Danish autonomous territory’s capital yesterday, in a strong show of support for the local government. Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has repeatedly insisted that Washington needs to control the strategic, mineral-rich Arctic island for security reasons. Trump last month backed off his threats to seize Greenland after saying he had struck a “framework” deal with NATO chief Mark Rutte to ensure greater US influence. A US-Denmark-Greenland working group has been established to discuss ways to meet Washington’s security concerns
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
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