■PHILIPPINES
UK businessman killed
A 61-year-old British businessman has been killed by armed robbers, police said yesterday. Three assailants forced their way on Sunday into a home shared by Charles Stuart Maxwell and his Filipina girlfriend in the town of Ubay, on the island of Bohol. “One of the suspects shot the victim twice in the chest,” police said in a report to Manila headquarters, adding that Maxwell died while being taken to the hospital. Police said the robbers took cash and other valuables from his girlfriend, who was unharmed. Bohol is an island frequented by tourists for its beaches and picturesque hills. Police said violent crime in the area was rare.
■SRI LANKA
Tigers reject brief ceasefire
The Tamil Tiger rebels yesterday dismissed the government’s announcement of a two-day ceasefire as insincere and called for a permanent, internationally arranged truce. President Mahinda Rajapaksa had ordered the military to halt its offensives against the cornered rebels for the Sri Lankan new year. The ceasefire was to end yesterday. The military asked tens of thousands of trapped civilians to take advantage of the lull in fighting and flee the rebel-controlled war zone. Only about 44 people crossed into government territory on the first day. A Tamil rebel statement yesterday called the government’s truce an “act of hoodwinking” and said a “ceasefire under the auspices of the international community alone will be effective and productive.”
■JAPAN
Six injured in crane crash
Six people were injured yesterday in Tokyo’s Kojimachi business district after a construction crane fell onto the street, media reports said. A 62-year-old woman suffered a cardiac arrest after the 28m crane operating at a construction site fell over onto the street. Another passerby was injured but still conscious, Jiji Press quoted the Tokyo Metropolitan Fire Department as saying. The 38-year-old crane operator suffered a back injury and three workers were rescued out of a truck. The crane was lifting a 6 tonne cylinder used to pour concrete for a building foundation when it fell, blocking three lanes of traffic.
■JAPAN
Boat sinks, 12 still missing
Twelve crew members on a fishing boat went missing yesterday after their vessel sank off the coast of Nagasaki Prefecture, media reports said. Ten others were rescued by other fishing boats and taken to a hospital, with one of them suffering an injured finger, Kyodo News Agency reported. The Daiei Maru No 11 was engulfed by high waves about 12.6km from Hirado Island yesterday morning. The coast guard has dispatched seven patrol boats and two aircraft in search for the missing fishermen.
■CHINA
‘Green’ purchases promoted
Local governments have been ordered to buy more energy-efficient products as part of the national drive to curb pollution and combat global warming, state press reported yesterday. The State Council issued a statement on Monday calling for all local governments to place a higher priority on eco-friendly products in their public purchases, the China Daily reported. Governments will be required to strictly follow a compulsory green procurement list, which was published in 2007 and includes nine types of items, such as air conditioners and computers, it said.
■IRAN
US reporter on trial
US-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi, who has been detained since January, has been put on trial for spying for the US, a spokesman for the judiciary said yesterday. “Yesterday, the first session of the trial was held and she was given an opportunity to speak in the court to present her defense,” Ali Reza Jamshidi told reporters. He said Saberi was accused “for spying for foreigners ... for America.”
■SUDAN
Journalist’s killers executed
Nine people have been executed for the killing of a newspaper editor who became a target of anger over an article deemed blasphemous. The Sudan news agency said the nine convicts were hanged on Monday at a prison in the capital. Mohammed Taha Ahmed was the editor of an independent daily. He was killed in 2006. A year earlier he received death threats because his paper republished an article from the Internet that questioned the parentage of the Prophet Mohammed. The editor apologized. Masked men abducted him from his home in the capital and his body was later found decapitated in the street. The killing sparked local and international criticism from journalists.
■RUSSIA
Drones deal confirmed
Moscow concluded its first weapons deal with Israel, purchasing unmanned spy planes valued at around US$49 million, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry in Moscow told the daily Izvestiya on Monday. A military export cited by the paper said the purchase was in reaction to last year’s August war in the south Caucasus — where Georgia successfully employed such drones against Russia. Moscow made the deal despite objections from Israel’s political adversaries Iran and Syria, which are also customers of Moscow’s military hardware. Deputy Defense Minister Vladimir Popovkin said his country was purchasing the drones for test purposes. Local media said the foreign purchase of military technology was the first by the country since 1940.
■RUSSIA
Police fired after drinking
Three off-duty policemen were fired on Monday for driving drunk through Moscow’s Red Square in the early hours of the morning, dressed in their police uniforms. “A medical examination revealed that all three policemen were drunk,” Moscow City Police said in a statement about the incident which took place on Friday. “[They have] tarnished the honor and dignity of police officers.” Russians are some of the world’s heaviest drinkers and demographers often cite high alcohol consumption as a factor in the low life expectancy of men. The image of national airline Aeroflot’s subsidiary Aeroflot-Nord was dealt a serious blow earlier this year when alcohol was found in the blood of one of its pilots who crashed over the Urals, killing 88 people on board.
■FRANCE
Gunman kills two people
A gunman wielding a hunting rifle shot two people to death outside his house in the northern town of Douchy-les-Mines, local radio reported on Monday. The 63-year-old gunman, a retired truck driver, fled into his residence after the shootings, but surrendered to police several hours later. Earlier reports spoke of three people killed. The victims were identified as a young couple who were about to visit the gunman’s neighbors. No reasons were given for the killings. Media reports said the gunman was known to local police for quarrels with his neighbors and had previously fired shots at their house.
■UNITED STATES
Boy takes subway alone
Authorities say a five-year-old boy slipped onto a New York City subway alone on Monday and rode for 34 stops from one end of Manhattan to the other before anyone intercepted him. Samuel Sosa was reunited with his mother, unharmed, after his hour-long trip. Griselda Sosa said her son got away from her at around 7:40am while she got coffee near an elevated station on the No. 1 line in Manhattan. The boy apparently sprinted up the station’s stairs, squeezed under a turnstile and boarded a southbound train before she could stop him. Transit workers spotted him at around 8:40am.
■UNITED STATES
Last octuplet heads home
The last of the world’s longest surviving set of octuplets was released from a hospital in suburban Los Angeles on Monday after spending more than two months in the neonatal intensive care unit. Jonah, the smallest of the octuplets, who were born nine weeks premature on Jan. 26, has gone home to join his brothers and sisters, said a spokeswoman with Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center.
■PERU
Bridge collapse kills nine
Seven children between 11 and 14 years old and two teachers died when a bridge they were crossing collapsed in the Andean district of Cora Cora, Ayacucho Province, officials said. The tragedy left 53 people injured, 14 of them in critical condition. The 100m bridge was said to be poorly maintained and collapsed as children and teachers from three schools were crossing. The victims fell as far as 80m into a precipice, officials said. Maria Torrealva, regional health director of Ayacucho, said rescue efforts were made more difficult because helicopters offered by a private mining company were unable to reach the site because of poor weather conditions.
■MEXICO
‘Texican’ ad draws criticism
An advertisement for Burger King’s Texican Whopper burger that has run in Europe has drawn heavy criticism. The ad shows a small wrestler dressed in a cape resembling a Mexican flag. The wrestler teams up with a lanky US cowboy almost twice his height to illustrate the cross-border blend of flavors. “The taste of Texas with a little spicy Mexican,” a narrator’s voice says. The taller cowboy boosts the wrestler up to reach high shelves and helps clean tall windows, while the Mexican helps the cowboy open a jar. Mexico’s ambassador to Spain said Monday he has written a letter to Burger King’s offices in that nation objecting to the ad and asking that it be removed. Jorge Zermeno told Radio Formula that the ads “improperly use the stereotyped image of a Mexican.”
■COLOMBIA
Suspected rebel arrested
Police said on Monday they had arrested a suspected FARC rebel leader in charge of the group’s drug trafficking operations and who is high up on the US Justice Department’s most wanted list. Ignacio Leal, 34, is the reputed political and financial leader of the FARC’s “Eastern Bloc” faction that operates in near the Venezuelan border, Police Public Security director Orlando Paez said. Arrested in Arauquita, Leal was “a top target of the US Justice Department” in drug-related matters. Police said Leal, also known as “Camilo” or “El Tuerto” (one-eyed), managed drug trafficking operations for the Eastern Bloc, one of the FARC’s most violent units. Leal is wanted for terrorism, drug trafficking, organized crime, kidnapping and blackmail, the police said.
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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