■MALAYSIA
US urged to rethink warning
The government has urged the US to review what it called a “misleading” travel advisory last week warning of possible attacks on foreigners on Borneo. The US warned its citizens that criminal and terrorist groups could be plotting attacks in Sabah state and urged Americans to “avoid or use extreme caution,” especially when traveling to remote island resorts in Sabah. A Foreign Ministry official met with US Ambassador James Keith on Monday to stress that the security in Sabah was “not as perceived” in the advisory.
■CHINA
Briton wins singing contest
Mary-Jess Leaverland, 19, is celebrating victory in a Chinese version of X Factor watched by millions. Leaverland, a second-year student at the University of Sheffield, arrived last September to study for her joint honors degree in Chinese and music. She was invited to enter the show I Want to Sing to the Stars after winning in a smaller competition for foreigners. She won the live grand final after impressing the judges with her gutsy renditions of opera and pop songs. “I was the only foreign person in the finals so I can’t believe I won it,” she said. “I didn’t really realize how big it was but it is screened in the Jiangsu Province which goes out to about 70 million.” The winning song was Yue Guang Ai Ren (Moonlight Lovers), which features in the film Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. She won a trophy and about US$1,500.
■INDIA
Seven policemen hurt
Seven policemen were injured in two separate attacks by suspected Muslim militants in Kashmir, police said yesterday. Six officers were hurt when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb planted on a bridge in southern Pulwama district late on Monday, a spokesman said. A policeman on foot patrol was also injured in a gun attack in the same district.
■INDONESIA
Death sentence requested
Prosecutors yesterday requested the death sentence for former chief corruption fighter Antasari Azhar, who is on trial for the alleged murder of his rival in a love triangle. Prosecutor Cirus Sinaga told the South Jakarta District court Azhar had “participated in the act of persuading others to carry out premeditated murder.” Azhar has denied any role in the March gangland-style shooting of businessman Nasrudin Zulkarnaen, and says he is the victim of a conspiracy to discredit the Corruption Eradication Commission. Police allege Azhar, 56, carried out the killing after Zulkarnaen tried to blackmail him over a Jakarta hotel tryst with the businessman’s 22-year-old golf caddy wife.
■UNITED KINGDOM
DJ criticized over ‘Jump’
A radio DJ is being criticized for playing Van Halen’s Jump as police tried to talk a suicidal woman down from a highway bridge last week. A mental health charity said it was horrified by the incident on Thursday morning and would bring it up with media regulators. Disc jockey Steve Penk, who owns Revolution Radio and hosts its morning show, said he played the song at the request of a commuter sitting in traffic on a highway shut down while police negotiators tried to talk the woman off the bridge. He said several commuters had called to express frustration at the delays. Penk said he made no reference to the woman in playing the song.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Hindu wants funeral pyre
A Hindu man who wants the right to be cremated on a traditional funeral pyre after he dies has taken his case to the Court of Appeal. Lawyer Rambert de Mello said on Monday that his 71-year-old client, Davender Ghai, wanted to be cremated on a wood pyre that is open to the sky. Ghai said in a statement that he wanted his “soul to arise from the flames like the mythical phoenix, not be incinerated in an industrial furnace.” A High Court judge ruled last year that such pyres are forbidden by law, which states that all cremations must take place within a building with a wall and a roof. Judges at the Court of Appeal said they would rule later.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Falklands still in dispute
London has rejected Argentina’s latest claim to the Falkland Islands, more than a quarter of a century after the nations went to war over the Atlantic archipelago. Argentina passed a law last month laying claim to the Falklands and several other overseas British territories. But Foreign Office minister Chris Bryant said on Monday that his country had “no doubt” about its sovereignty over the islands, where the two countries fought a brief war in 1982 that ended in the defeat of the South American nation. “The UK firmly rejects the enactment and promulgation, on Dec. 9, 2009, of Argentine Law 26.552,” Bryant said in a written statement.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Newton’s theory revealed
An 18th-century manuscript telling the original story of how Isaac Newton developed his theory of gravity after seeing an apple fall off a tree was made public on Monday for the first time. The account forms part of William Stukeley’s 1752 biography of the scientist, which has been hidden away in the archives of the Royal Society but has now been published online. “After dinner, the weather being warm, we went out into the garden and drank tea under the shade of some apple trees, only he and myself,” Stukeley’s account of an evening with Newton in the scientist’s garden says. “Amidst other discourse, he told me he was just in the same situation as when formerly the notion of gravitation came into his mind.”
■IRAN
Prosecutor fatally shot
State media say gunmen fatally shot a local prosecutor outside his home in the northwest. State TV yesterday identified the prosecutor as Vali Hajgholizadeh. It said two attackers opened fire at him outside his building late on Monday in the town of Khoy, about 780km northwest of Tehran. The report says the prosecutor died later of his wounds in a hospital. The area is close to the Turkish border and has seen occasional clashes between security forces and separatist Kurdish groups.
■MEXICO
Police frown on tweet tips
Some Twitter users are revealing the locations of police drunk-driving checkpoints in Mexico City and the people behind the tweets could be prosecuted, police said on Monday. Public Safety Department spokesman Julio Iver said it is illegal for anyone to “divulge privileged information on police agencies,” but he did not say what sanctions the Twitter users could face. Police change the location of the breath-test checkpoints each day to discourage drunk driving. Police cannot do roving tests from their patrol cars, because the city requires that a doctor be present to administer the exams. A Twitter account has been tweeting the checkpoints location since last month, allowing motorists to avoid them. Called “Anti Breath Test,” the account now has over 3,400 followers.
■PERU
Castaneda leads polls
Lima Mayor Luis Castaneda leads in a popularity survey ahead of the presidential election next year, with disgraced ex-president Alberto Fujimori’s daughter running second, a poll released on Monday found. Castaneda has 23 percent support among voters, followed by Keiko Fujimori, a member of the legislature, with 18 percent, a survey by the firm Ipsos Apoyo showed. Alberto Fujimori, 71, was president from 1990 to 2000. As president he divorced his then-wife, and his daughter Keiko formally served as the country’s first lady. The ex-president however was found guilty of a series of crimes, including human rights abuses and abuse of power, and is serving a 25-year prison sentence. Third in the poll is nationalist Ollanta Humala, who lost to current president Alan Garcia in a 2006 run-off vote. Garcia is banned from running for re-election.
■PERU
Venezuelan granted asylum
Lima has granted asylum to a Venezuelan activist charged by Venezuealan President Hugo Chavez’s government with inciting violence during a protest. Peruvian Foreign Minister Jose Antonio Garcia Belaunde says Oscar Perez received asylum on Monday. Perez came to Peru in September after a Venezuelan court ordered his arrest on charges of conspiring to commit and instigate crimes during an August political demonstration.
■COLOMBIA
Navy rescues 15
The navy plucked 15 people from the open sea yesterday after a Venezuelan-flagged vessel sank in the Caribbean off its northern coast, it said. Three people were unaccounted for. A frigate, several coast guard vessels, a helicopter and a patrol plane took part in the search for crew members of the motor-vessel Calypso. The vessel, which was bound for Panama, went down 83km off the Caribbean port of Cartagena with 18 people aboard. The navy said in a statement that 15 survivors were rescued and transferred to a naval hospital in Cartagena.
■EL SALVADOR
Quake jolts Pacific coast
Residents in El Salvador and Guatemala reacted in alarm on Monday when a strong, 6.0-magnitude quake hit offshore from the Central American nations, but there were no immediate reports of casualties. The countries’ seismological monitoring services and the US Geological Survey said the quake struck just 9km off the Pacific coast at 9:40am. The quake shook buildings in the capitals San Salvador and Guatemala City, provoking panic by people fearing a Haiti-sized disaster was heading their way, but emergency services reported no casualties nor damage.
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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