■ BANGLADESH
Winds batter coast
Tens of thousands of people heading to their hometowns for the holidays at the end of Ramadan were stranded at ferry stations as tropical squalls battered the fragile coastline at the weekend, officials said yesterday. Gale winds forced the suspension of ferry services along the southern coast while half a dozen fishing boats that ignored storm warnings capsized in the high waves. About 50,000 holiday makers were trapped at ferry stations across the country as the river boat service was suspended. At least 12 fishermen were missing in the Bay of Bengal after high winds devastated thatched homes, rice plains and animal farms.
■ CAMBODIA
US man commits suicide
A US national charged with murder over the strangling of his Vietnamese girlfriend died of an apparent suicide in a hospital, local media reported yesterday. Grant Kim Helling, 47, was found hanging dead on Saturday in the bathroom at Phnom Penh’s Monivong Hospital, the English-language Cambodia Daily newspaper reported. The man was reportedly getting treatment for his legs, which he badly injured jumping from his first-floor balcony on Feb. 22. He was arrested that day when he allegedly set his Phnom Penh apartment on fire in an attempt to destroy his girlfriend’s body. When police searched his home they found the woman strangled with a coat hanger.
■ PHILIPPINES
Divers hunt for pesticide
The coast guard barred all fishing activities within 1km around the site of a sunken passenger ferry, as salvage operations to recover its toxic cargo shift into high gear, a senior official said yesterday. Vice Admiral Wilfredo Tamayo, coast guard commandant, said he sought the help of the military to prevent fishermen from going near the capsized Princess of the Stars near Sibuyan island, 300km south of Manila. Tamayo said the move was aimed at ensuring the salvage operations recovering the hazardous chemicals from the ferry, which sank in June after being battered by a powerful typhoon, will be unhampered. Divers from two salvage companies made an initial survey of the capsized ferry last week and located its toxic cargoes by creating an access hole on the right side of the hull, Transportation Undersecretary Elena Bautista said. Bautista said the divers began making preparations to remove the chemicals, including at least 10 tonnes of pesticide. She said that aside from the chemicals, there were at least 100,000 liters of fuel in the ferry’s tanks. After removing the chemicals, the divers will start retrieving dead bodies still trapped in the ferry.
■ EGYPT
European tourists released
State news said a kidnapped 19-member European tour group had been freed and that the 11 tourists and eight Egyptian guides and drivers were on their way to Cairo. Yesterday’s report, also carried by state television, referred to an “operation this morning” to free the 19 but did not say where it took place. It said the captives were in good health, but gave no details. The group disappeared on Sept. 19 while on a desert safari trip in a remote corner of southwestern Egypt. Their abductors took them to Sudan, then to Libya, but their final whereabouts were unclear. The tourists are five Germans, five Italians and one Romanian. The reports quoted an unnamed Egyptian official.
■ TURKEY
Inmates take hostages
Inmates at a prison in western province of Balikesir morning took five guards hostage yesterday morning in a protest at the failure of the government to implement a general amnesty, the Anadolu news agency reported. The hostage-taking at the jail in Burhaniye took place at a before dawn breakfast with prisoners from three wards starting the protest, Balikesir Governor Selahattin Hatipoglu told Anadolu. The prisoners were eating breakfast early as they are fasting during daylight hours during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Hatipoglu said there was a fire in one of the wards of the prison and that they were attempting to negotiate the release of the guards.
■ SOMALIA
US keeps eye on pirates
A US navy ship is keeping watch on pirates who seized a Ukrainian ship carrying 33 tanks and other military supplies to Kenya, a regional maritime group said yesterday. The pirates, who captured the MV Faina and its 21 crew members on Friday as the boat sailed for Mombasa port, have reduced their ransom demand to US$20 million from US$35 million, the East African Seafarers’ Assistance Program said. The seizure, the most dramatic in a rash of recent hijackings, has worrying ramifications for the turbulent east African region and the commercially strategic Gulf of Aden.
■ BELGIUM
Police evacuate US embassy
Police say the US embassy in Brussels has been evacuated after a caller falsely told them there was a bomb in the building. Police on the scene said no bomb had gone off by the 11:45pm GMT deadline on Sunday that the anonymous caller gave them. They found nothing when they checked the building for possible explosives, giving the all-clear shortly before 12am GMT. The US complex in the Belgian capital houses both the US embassy and the US diplomatic mission to the EU.
■ GERMANY
Cash was from smuggling
Authorities say they seized 8.7 million euros (US$12.7 million) in cash from a 29-year-old student this year and suspect the money came from cigarette or drug smuggling. Customs spokesman Wolfgang Schmitz says officers found the money in May. He confirmed a report in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that the money was found in the student’s luggage. Schmitz said on Sunday that ongoing investigations indicated the money came “from smuggling deals — either narcotics or tobacco,” and there was no indication of a connection to terrorism. Travelers are required to declare sums of cash greater than 10,000 euros when crossing the border.
■ MEXICO
Police mishandle slaying
State and federal police have mishandled investigations of the 2006 slaying of a US journalist-activist, the Mexican National Human Rights Commission said on Sunday. The commission said in a statement that its probe of the Bradley Roland Will killing found Oaxaca state investigators failed to interview witnesses, collect relevant evidence or complete an autopsy. The 36-year-old reporter for indymedia.org was fatally shot in October 2006 while filming a clash between protesters and gunmen on the outskirts of Oaxaca City. The conflict in Oaxaca began as a strike by teachers seeking higher pay. It quickly grew into a broader movement including Indian groups, students, farmers and left-leaning activists, who claimed Oaxaca Governor Ulises Ruiz rigged his electoral victory and repressed opponents.
■ COLOMBIA
FARC chief calls for attacks
Rebel chief Alfonso Cano has written to his followers calling for more attacks in their war against the Bogota government as well as cultivating “friends and aides” of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, published reports said on Sunday. Intercepted by Bogota’s army intelligence, Cano’s e-mail dated Oct. 16 last year also urges rebels to lay more land mines and buy more weapons, including missiles and communications equipment to harass government forces, with US$5 million or US$6 million from rebel coffers. The new tactics are aimed at raising the profile of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the rebel chief says in his message, which military chief Freddy Padilla confirmed as authentic. After releasing a few of its prominent hostages earlier this year, FARC has been seen as struggling against a military crackdown ordered by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.
■ PERU
Eighteen die in bus crash
In the north a tour bus plunged 150m down into a ravine, killing at least 18 people and injuring 60 others in an accident on Sunday in Olmos district, police said. Survivors of the accident, which took place near the city of Jaen in Cajamarca, 780km north of the capital Lima, said the driver of the double-decker bus apparently fell asleep. The bus, which was on its way to the Ecuador border, was completely destroyed. Last year 3,500 people died in traffic accidents in Peru.
■ UNITED STATES
Two injured in explosion
Dresser-Rand Group Inc, a maker of oilfield equipment, said that two employees were injured by an explosion at a compressor-making plant. The workers were hurt during a helium test of a cylinder at the company’s reciprocating compressor facility in Painted Post, New York, Dresser said in a statement on PRNewswire. The incident occurred at about 5:45pm local time yesterday. The two workers were taken to a hospital in nearby Elmira, New York.
■ UNITED STATES
Ex-‘Newsweek’ editor dies
A former Newsweek editor widely credited with making the magazine competitive with archrival Time magazine has died in New York City. Osborne Elliott was editor from 1961 to 1976. He was known as Oz. Details of his death haven’t been released. Newsweek editor Jon Meacham calls Elliott “the architect of the modern Newsweek.” He says Elliott’s vision and passion “made the magazine into a global force.” Meacham says that every election day, Elliott would leave a telephone message saying, “My soul craves exit polls.” Newsweek says Elliott was 83.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
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