■ AUSTRALIA
Troops pull out of Iraq
About 500 combat troops pulled out of their base in southern Iraq on Sunday, fulfilling an election promise by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to bring the soldiers home this year. A British military spokesman in the Iraqi city of Basra said the pullout from Talil base in Nassiriya was under way, but a spokesman for the governor of Dhi Qar Province said it had been completed, with US forces replacing the Australians. Australia was one of the first countries to commit troops to the Iraq war. In addition to the combat troops, it also deployed aircraft and warships to the Gulf to protect Iraq’s offshore oil platforms.
■ INDIA
Police kill Maoist rebels
At least four Maoist guerrillas were killed in combat with government forces in the eastern state of Jharkhand, police said yesterday. Police clashed with rebels from the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) on Saturday night in the Hazaribagh district, about 110km south of state capital Ranchi. “The security personnel asked a group of 25 rebels to surrender but the rebels opened fire. In the ensuing exchange, four Maoists were killed,” district police chief Praveen Kumar Singh said. “A female rebel was also arrested,” Singh said, adding that one police officer was injured in the encounter.
■ JAPAN
Fukuda leaves for Europe
Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda left for Europe yesterday to hold talks with leaders from some G8 industrial nations ahead of next month’s summit in Japan. Fukuda said he hoped to have frank discussions about the economy, climate change, food security and other global concerns during his five-day tour of Germany, Britain and Italy.
■ MALAYSIA
Women told to tote condoms
The Health Ministry is urging women to carry condoms to protect themselves against being exploited by their partners, in view of the rising number of women contracting HIV, news report said yesterday. “This is not to debase them but to protect them,” Deputy Health Minister Abdul Latiff Ahmad told reporters after launching the International AIDS Memorial Day on Saturday in Selangor. It was the first time that the country openly celebrated International AIDS Memorial Day. The ministry said the trend of women contracting HIV was on the rise, the Star daily reported. Apart from sex workers, many women are believed to have been unknowingly infected by their husbands, president of the Malaysian AIDS Council Adeeba Kamarulzaman said. Last year three people died of AIDS everyday countrywide, the ministry said.
■ MALAYSIA
Turtle nests under siege
Authorities are carrying out night patrols near endangered Hawksbill turtle nesting sites after 4,000 eggs were stolen, reports said yesterday. State fisheries officials have begun the patrols near the turtle hatcheries in Malacca state amid fears of more thefts, the Star daily reported. Chief Minister Mohammad Ali Rustam said he would investigate how the eggs, worth US$3,000, could have been stolen over a month-long period from 30 turtle nesting sites along the coastline. “I will ask the [State council] member in charge of agriculture and rural development and fisheries department to look into the matter,” he told the paper. The World Conservation Union lists the Hawksbill turtle as critically endangered. A surge in demand for exotic turtles and eggs in Southeast Asia has been blamed for the rampant illegal trade.
■ SRI LANKA
Clashes kill 13 people
At least nine Tamil Tiger rebels and four government soldiers have died in the latest clashes across the embattled north, the defense ministry said yesterday. Six Tiger rebels and six soldiers were also wounded in Saturday’s fighting, which took place in Jaffna, Vavuniya, Mannar and Weli Oya, the ministry said in a statement. The deaths bring the number of Tamil Tiger cadres killed by government troops to 3,989 since January, while 333 security forces personnel have died in combat over the same period, the ministry said. There was no immediate comment from the Tamil Tigers.
■ INDIA
Pakistani denied entry
A former Pakistani human rights minister was denied entry to the country because he arrived at the New Delhi airport without proper papers, not as reports said because he was mistaken for a criminal, the government said on Saturday. Media had said Ansar Burney, whose efforts in securing the release of an Indian death row prisoner in Pakistan in February was much appreciated by New Delhi, was deported to Dubai on Friday. They said Burney was mistaken for a person with a similar name who was listed on an airport “look out” notice. The Home Ministry issued a statement denying the reports. Burney was instrumental in winning a presidential pardon for Kashmir Singh, a death row prisoner who spent 35 years in a jail on spying charges. He is leading a human rights campaign to save another Indian prisoner sentenced to death on charges of setting off bombs in Pakistan.
■ SPAIN
Blast rocks building firm
A bomb exploded outside the city of Zarautz yesterday, slightly injuring three people, an official said. It went off at about 2:30am outside the offices of construction company Amenabar to the east of Zarautz, a seaside city 55km from the French border in the Basque country, a regional Interior Ministry official said. An hour earlier, road assistance service DYA had received an anonymous call warning of the bomb. Police were inspecting the area when the bomb exploded. Amenabar is involved in the construction of high-speed train links between Spanish cities. Some 6,000 Basque nationalists had marched on Saturday in nearby San Sebastian against the project.
■ EGYPT
Christians, Muslims clash
One Muslim was killed and four Christians were wounded on Saturday in a clash over disputed land near a Christian monastery, security sources said. Muslim Khalil Mohammed, 39, was killed by gunfire, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity. At least two of the wounded Christians were monks at the monastery, the sources said. The groups exchanged fire after Christians in the town of Mallawy, about 300km south of Cairo, began constructing a wall around disputed land near the Abu Fana monastery, the sources said. Muslims who believed the agricultural land belonged to them objected, triggering the exchange of fire.
■ ISRAEL
Jerusalem homes planned
Housing Minister Zeev Boim is planning to build hundreds of new homes for Israelis in east Jerusalem, which Palestinians want as capital of their future state. Boim spokesman Eran Sidis says 763 housing units will go up in Pisgat Zeev and 121 housing units in Har Homa. Both are large Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem, annexed by Israel in 1967. Israel and the Palestinians are holding peace talks that include discussions on the future of east Jerusalem. Israel says it will retain Jewish neighborhoods there under any agreement. But Palestinians say new construction badly compromises the talks.
■ ZIMBABWE
Party workers reported shot
State-owned television said on Saturday two ruling ZANU-PF party members had been shot dead by suspected opposition supporters in a rural district. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) denied any involvement in the shooting. The Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corp (ZBC) said two ruling party members were shot dead on Friday in Mutoko district, a ZANU-PF stronghold about 140km east of Harare. “Suspected MDC supporters shot and killed two ZANU-PF women’s league members in Mutoko ... raising fears that they could have been targeted as the MDC intensifies its campaign to intimidate ruling party supporters,” ZBC said.
■IRAQ
US toll hits monthly low
Nineteen US soldiers were killed in Iraq last month, the lowest monthly toll since the US-led invasion of 2003, figures maintained by icasualties.org showed yesterday. The month which saw the highest US losses was November 2004, when 137 US troops were killed, according to the Web site. The defense, interior and health ministries said their figures for last month showed at least 563 Iraqis were killed during the month compared with at least 1,073 dead in April and 1,082 in March. Figures made available by security officials showed 504 civilians were killed last month, along with 32 policemen and 27 soldiers.
■ VENEZUELA
Arrested man not agent: US
The US on Friday denied that an arrested man worked for the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), after local authorities reported the detainee had identified himself as a DEA agent. “He is not a DEA agent and he is not a US citizen,” deputy embassy press attache Jennifer Rahimi said. A DEA agent arrest in Venezuela could have stoked tensions between the US and one of its biggest oil suppliers. President Hugo Chavez ended all cooperation with the agency in 2005. The National Guard had said on Thursday the man was acting suspiciously when he was detained close to the border with Colombia. “The official at the scene proceeded to interrogate him and he said he was a DEA agent,” General Gabriel Oviedo had said.
■ VENEZUELA
Army kills 'subversive'
Troops killed a Colombian “subversive” in a border gun battle, President Hugo Chavez said on Saturday, an incident that could fuel new tensions between the two countries. “They fired at each other and one [member] of the subversive group died,” Chavez said during a televised speech. Marxist rebels and right-wing paramilitary gangs have for years roamed the isolated border region. Colombia in March bombed a rebel camp in Ecuador where leftist guerrillas often hide from Colombian forces, leading Chavez to break off diplomatic ties with Colombia and sparking the Andean region’s worst crisis in a decade.
■ COLOMBIA
Landslide buries 20 homes
Emergency workers and residents used spades and rescue dogs to hunt for victims on Saturday after rains trigged a landslide that killed at least six people when it swept over a poor Medellin neighborhood. An avalanche of mud and rubble buried about 20 homes, and as many as 20 people were listed as missing in the latest disaster triggered by the country’s intense winter season and heavy rainfall, authorities said.
■ UNITED STATES
Cancer drug works: study
Eli Lilly and Co’s chemotherapy drug Gemzar more than doubled the overall survival for early stage pancreatic cancer patients five years after surgery to remove their tumors, results from a long-term study released on Saturday showed. Gemzar, or gemcitabine, is the standard treatment for patients whose pancreatic cancer is too advanced for surgery. Most pancreatic cancer is diagnosed at a late stage. Researchers at the Charite University Medical School in Berlin studied the drug in patients with early stage pancreatic cancer who had received surgery, concluding it should be the standard of care for those patients as well. The study was presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago.
■GUATEMALA
Fires threaten Mayan site
Illegal settlers likely working for drug smugglers are starting fires to clear land in the jungle and threatening investigations into an ancient Mayan city. US and Guatemalan archeologists who trekked to the La Corona site in northern Guatemala to map dozens of ruins had to fight an encroaching blaze. They battled the fire for two weeks, helped by natural dirt barriers and rains that calmed the flames, but land invaders simply lit more fires, dangerously close to the more than 1,200-year-old Mayan site. The Peten region has become a favorite trafficking route for drug cartels. Smugglers clear jungle to build airstrips to land planes loaded with cocaine, which is then trucked over the porous border with Mexico and up to US consumers.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
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