■ THAILAND
School torched in south
Suspected Muslim insurgents burned down a school in the restive south yesterday, a day after detonating two bombs that killed one person and left 71 wounded, police said. Arsonists torched the school in Narathiwat province at about 1am local time when it was empty, Lieutenant Anurak Chathapon said. Nobody was injured but the two-story schoolhouse was destroyed. The attack bore the trademark of Muslim insurgents, Anurak said.
■ GERMANY
Bus fire leaves 20 dead
A tour bus caught fire on a highway near the city of Hannover on Tuesday night, killing 20 people after a passenger reportedly sneaked a cigarette, police said. Survivors told authorities the fire broke out in the bathroom of the bus after a person apparently smoked a cigarette there, police spokesman Stefan Wittke said. When the door was opened, flames shot out and quickly engulfed the bus, he said. “Passengers who were sitting close to the exit could get away, but the others had no chance,” a fire department official said. In addition to the deaths, thirteen people were injured in the blaze, including three with serious burns, according to the fire department. The bus had 39 primarily elderly passengers and the driver aboard, the company that owns it said. Wittke, however, said 33 people were aboard the bus.
■ CHINA
Factory owner held
Authorities have detained the owner of a feed processing factory suspected of selling chicken feed tainted with an industrial chemical that was later found in eggs, state media reported. Xinhua news agency said late on Tuesday that authorities in Shenyang found that the factory mixed an ingredient tainted with melamine into feed sold to the country’s leading egg producer, Dalian Hanwei Enterprise Group. Xinhua said the owner of the Mingxing Feed Processing Factory, Gao Xingtao, was detained and the remaining tainted animal feed made by the factory was destroyed.
■ COLOMBIA
Army chief resigns
Army commander General Mario Montoya resigned on Tuesday after a probe tied scores of officers to the disappearance of a group of men who were later shot, dumped in mass graves and reported as killed in combat. The scandal has already forced President Alvaro Uribe to purge 27 officers from the army as the UN and rights groups call security forces to stop killing civilians to falsely inflate combat successes. Montoya had been the spearhead of Uribe’s recent military successes against rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
■ PUERTO RICO
Voters oust governor
Puerto Rico voted on Tuesday to oust an incumbent governor who is under indictment for allegedly violating campaign finance laws, electing a challenger who vowed to fight crime and spur the island’s economy. Governor Anibal Acevedo Vila conceded the election after Luis Fortuno of the New Progressive Party took a strong lead in early returns. Fortuno had 53 percent of the vote to 41 percent for the governor with 42 percent of ballots counted. The governor had urged islanders to support him despite a 24-count indictment charging him with wire fraud and other offenses for allegedly raising money illegally to pay off campaign debts from his terms as Puerto Rico’s nonvoting delegate to Congress from 2000 to 2004.
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
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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