■CHINA
Confucius hits the lottery
The state-run lottery is offering Confucius-themed tickets with colorful drawings of the ancient philosopher and his proverbs, drawing discussion over whether gambling and his teachings are a good fit. The Confucius-themed tickets are aimed at educating the public about ancient Chinese culture and helping people live a “healthy, wholesome life,” the lottery Web site in Shandong Province said. The site said the Ministry of Finance approved the program launched a week ago in Confucius’ hometown of Qufu and being introduced elsewhere in the northeast province later this month.
■INDIA
Boy’s killing sparks clashes
Police and Muslim protesters clashed for the second day running yesterday over the death of a Muslim boy killed by a police tear-gas shell in Kashmir. Police said at least four policemen and six protesters were hurt during violence in Srinagar, one of several Muslim-majority towns shut down by a strike called by separatists to protest against the boy’s killing. Wamiq Farooq died on Sunday after being struck by a shell fired by police to quell an separatist demonstration. Yesterday, hundreds of protesters, many of then masked, used burning tires to block roads across the city. “The strike is to protest against the boy’s killing and human rights violations by Indian troops in general,” said Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, a moderate separatist leader.
■AUSTRALIA
Teens charged over fire
Police charged two teenagers yesterday with starting a wildfire that left one man dead on the same day a series of blazes raced across southern the country in a disaster that has become known as Black Saturday. The teens, aged 14 and 15, were each charged with several arson offenses, including arson causing death, Victoria state police said in a statement. A charge of arson causing death carries a penalty of up to 25 years in prison. The charges come nearly a year after a series of wildfires tore across huge parts of southeastern Victoria, killing 173 people and destroying more than 2,000 homes.
■INDONESIA
Obama to visit in March
US President Barack Obama will make what will be an emotional trip with his family to his childhood home next month and will also visit Australia, the White House announced on Monday. Obama, who was known as “Little Barry” when he lived in Jakarta with his mother in the 1960s, said last year in Singapore that he was looking forward to visiting his old haunts in Indonesia. He was invited to make the trip by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and both sides have said they plan to use Obama’s childhood ties to the country to further tighten a crucial pan-Pacific relationship.
■PAKISTAN
Tribesmen hang militants
A government official said tribesmen shot two militants to death and hung their bodies from an electricity pole in a region bordering Afghanistan where insurgent activity is on the upswing. The incident came as authorities probe reports that Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud died in a US missile strike elsewhere in the northwest. Official Abdul Malik said the bodies were displayed yesterday in the Inayat Kali area in Bajur tribal region. Bajur was the focus of a previous army offensive that seemed largely successful in clearing out the Taliban and al-Qaeda. But insurgents have recently staged a comeback.
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■IRAN
Tehran blames Israel
Tehran blamed Israel on Tuesday for the killing of a Hamas commander in Dubai last month. “This is another indication of the existence of state terrorism by the Zionist regime [Israel],” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told a news conference. “This shows the violation of other countries’ sovereignty by this regime.” Israel’s government has declined official comment on the Jan. 20 death of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai, which Hamas on Friday announced as an assassination.
■RUSSIA
Bomb injures conductor
A bomb exploded on a railway line near Saint Petersburg on Tuesday, injuring a train driver, two months after a blast derailed an express train killing 27 people, Russian investigators said. The explosion happened around 4:15am as a railway inspection carriage traveled along the line, investigators said. The driver was hospitalized with an injured leg. Trains from the nearby Baltiisky rail station were canceled until Tuesday evening as police and the Federal Security Service inspected the scene, a spokesman for the North-West Transport Prosecutors’ Office said.
■RUSSIA
Detentions ‘concern’ US
The US said on Monday it was “concerned” about the treatment of about 100 protesters detained by Russian authorities during a peaceful weekend demonstration in Moscow. “The United States is concerned by reports that authorities in Moscow on January 31 once again broke up a peaceful demonstration by Russian citizens,” the US State Department said in a statement. “The detention of at least 100 protesters, including prominent human rights defenders and opposition political leaders, together with reports of mistreatment against some of the demonstrators, constitutes another blow against freedom of speech and assembly, which are universal and fundamental rights that deserve to be protected and promoted,” the US statement said. A spokesman for the opposition Solidarnost movement said the detainees have since been released.
TURKEY
Kurdish party elects leaders
The new Kurdish party has elected a lawmaker and a former human rights activist, both former members of a banned party, as its leaders. The Peace and Democracy Party elected 37-year old Selahattin Demirtas in its first party congress on Monday. Delegates have also elected lawmaker Gulten Kisanak as its co-chairwoman. However, she will act as the party’s deputy leader because the law does not allow more than one chairman to lead a political party. Demirtas and Kisanak were members of the now defunct Democratic Society Party, the country’s main Kurdish political party. The nation’s highest court ordered the party disbanded in December for ties to Kurdish rebels and barred its two leaders from politics for five years.
■FRANCE
Vandals desecrate mosque
A Muslim group says vandals have desecrated a mosque in the north by painting its outside wall with anti-Islam slogans. The mosque attack in Crepy-en-Valois is the latest in a series of similar incidents. Mohammed Moussaoui, president of an umbrella organization for French Muslim groups, said on Monday that such attacks “endanger national unity.” The country has the largest Muslim population in western Europe — estimated at 5 million — and discrimination has become a source of grave concern.
■MEXICO
US contributes to drug woes
President Felipe Calderon said drug violence in his country reflects demand for narcotics in the neighboring US and easy access to weapons. “We are right next to the biggest drug consumer in the world,” Calderon told reporters in Tokyo yesterday during a visit to Japan. The US also “doesn’t have the least objection, any scruples, about selling all the arms it can to our country,” he said. Sixteen students were killed in a shooting at a party in Ciudad Juarez over the weekend in what authorities suspect was a mistaken drug hit.
■UNITED STATES
Canadian to sue US
A Canadian man who was transferred by US officials to Syria, where he was imprisoned and allegedly tortured, filed a suit before the US Supreme Court on Monday seeking to sue the US. Maher Arar is appealing a lower court ruling that his case could not proceed because it involved secret national security information. Arar, an engineer of Syrian origin, was arrested by US officials while he was transiting through New York in 2002. He was detained on the basis of information shared with US authorities by Canadian police that suggested he had ties to terrorists. Canadian authorities later cleared him of any connections to terrorism, apologized officially and agreed to pay him a substantial amount of money in damages for having supplied the incorrect information that led to his arrest. He has sought the same from the US government, but has been rejected by lower courts.
■CUBA
Gun amnesty announced
Havana has declared a two-month amnesty for citizens to register unlicensed guns, and says those passing aptitude and psychological tests will be allowed to keep their weapons. The move is unusual in a state where almost no one except some active military personnel and plainclothes state security agents are allowed to possess weapons. Even most police officers are required to leave their pistols at the station or in a regional barracks when on vacation or leave, and young men participating in mandatory military service are given unloaded firearms for most exercises. While Cuba is among the safest countries in the hemisphere, it is not unusual to find firearms in Cuban homes, though most are weapons improvised from household materials or guns that were smuggled into the country and bought on the black market.
■BRAZIL
Bus crash kills 12
At least 12 people were killed, including six children, when a school bus and a truck crashed on Monday on a bridge in the central state of Goias, Agencia Estado reported. The accident happened on the Rio Verdao Bridge near Montividiu as the school bus was taking children to school. Police said those killed in the accident included six children, three teenagers, both drivers and a woman who was on the bus. Twenty people were injured in the crash and taken to hospital.
■UNITED STATES
‘Catch’ captain has stroke
The Seattle-based captain of the Deadliest Catch fishing vessel Cornelia Marie has been flown to Anchorage after suffering a stroke while the boat was in port at St Paul Island, Alaska. The vessel’s Web site said Captain Phil Harris was stricken on Friday night. Harris was flown to Anchorage and underwent surgery over the weekend. His sons, Josh and Jake, joined him there.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
Cook Islands officials yesterday said they had discussed seabed minerals research with China as the small Pacific island mulls deep-sea mining of its waters. The self-governing country of 17,000 people — a former colony of close partner New Zealand — has licensed three companies to explore the seabed for nodules rich in metals such as nickel and cobalt, which are used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Despite issuing the five-year exploration licenses in 2022, the Cook Islands government said it would not decide whether to harvest the potato-sized nodules until it has assessed environmental and other impacts. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and