■INDIA
Buck stops with minister
Home Minister P. Chidambaram yesterday took responsibility for the massacre of 76 security personnel in a Maoist ambush. Tuesday’s attack was the Maoists’ bloodiest strike against India’s security forces and has tarnished Chidambaram’s image. “I have no hesitation in saying this: The buck stops at my desk,” Chidambaram told an annual function of the Central Reserve Police Force. “I accept full responsibility for what happened,” he said after paying tribute to the dead officers. The Maoist insurgency began in West Bengal in 1967 and has since spread to 20 of the country’s states. It has been labeled the country’s biggest internal security threat, but little is known about the movement’s leadership or numbers, estimated at between 10,000 and 20,000.
■CHINA
IPads hit ‘gray market’
Apple’s iPad is selling on the gray market only days after it went on sale in the US, a report said yesterday. The iPad was selling at a 50 percent mark-up to its US retail price, but prices were set to fall on the local market due to its wide availability and weaker-than-expected demand, the Financial Times said.
■BANGLADESH
Veils are optional: court
A court has ruled that Muslim women working at schools and colleges cannot be forced to wear a veil. “If any person tries to compel a woman to wear a veil against her consent ... that would amount to a violation of her fundamental rights as enshrined in the Constitution,” the High Court said following Thursday’s ruling. The verdict came in response to a petition seeking a directive following a report that an education officer had insulted a female teacher for not being veiled. While most people dress conservatively in Bangladesh, a veil is a rare sight.
■INDONESIA
Typo cost prisoner years
A Thai man has been released from a prison after spending three extra years behind bars because of a typo in his paperwork. Kamjai Khong Thavorn, 53, should have been released in 2007 after serving a 20-year sentence for heroin possession, but a clerical error wrongly stated his first year in prison as 1997 instead of 1987, the Jakarta Globe reported. Kamjai was released on Thursday after he told the justice minister of the mistake during a chance meeting on the minister’s tour of the prison, it said. “We realized the mistake that was made, so he was released unconditionally,” the prison’s warden said.
■NORTH KOREA
Japan extends sanctions
Japan yesterday extended by one year sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear and missile program and the past kidnappings of its nationals, a foreign ministry official said. The extension includes a trade ban, the denial of visas to North Koreans and restrictions on remittances by North Koreans living in Japan. It was the first such move by the DPJ government, which took power last September. Japan imposed sanctions against North Korea in 2006 after Pyongyang’s first nuclear test and has extended them every six or 12 months while also tightening them and enforcing UN sanctions. Tokyo has also long demanded Pyongyang clarify the fate of all Japanese nationals kidnapped by North Korean spies in the 1970s and 1980s to train its agents in Japanese language and culture. Tokyo claims Pyongyang is still hiding many of the victims.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Sex Pistols manager dies
Malcolm McLaren, the punk rock mogul best known as the manager of the Sex Pistols, has died after a battle with cancer, his girlfriend Young Kim said. He was 64. McLaren passed away on Thursday in a hospital in Switzerland following a fight against mesothelioma, a cancer that most commonly affects the lungs, Kim said by telephone. Former Sex Pistols frontman John Lydon led tributes to his ex-manager, issuing a statement signed Johnny Rotten, which was his stage name when he performed with the band. Kim said she was by his side when he passed away, as was McLaren’s son, Joseph Corre.
■DENMARK
No beer, no work
Warehouse and production workers at beer company Carlsberg went on strike on Wednesday after the company announced a new alcohol policy, which allows workers to drink beer only during lunch hours in the canteen, a company spokesman said. Previously, they could help themselves to beer throughout the day, from coolers placed around the work sites. The only restriction was “that you could not be drunk at work. It was up to each and every one to be responsible,” company spokesman Jens Bekke said. Bekke said around 800 workers went on strike on Wednesday and around 250 walked off their jobs on Thursday, resulting in interruptions to beer transports in and around Copenhagen.
■MALAWI
Villagers serenade Madonna
Villagers serenaded US pop star Madonna late on Thursday at an orphanage she bankrolls that cares for 8,000 orphans in impoverished Malawi. A local band and a choir sang songs praising Madonna as she visited the center in Namitete, 50km from the administrative capital Lilongwe. She was accompanied by her biological daughter Lourdes and Mercy “Chifundo” James, who was adopted by Madonna last year from the poor southern African nation. About 8,000 orphans and vulnerable children come to the center to learn, get fed and clothed. Some old men and women also come here to eat lunch. Madonna was expected to leave the country yesterday.
■IRAQ
Al-Qaeda claims bombings
Al-Qaeda’s umbrella group in Iraq has claimed responsibility for a triple suicide bombing outside foreign embassies in Baghdadthat killed more than 40 people. The group, known as the Islamic State of Iraq, posted a statement yesterday on a Web site that carries statements from al-Qaeda and other militant groups. The statement said last Sunday’s attacks were a “new strike into the heart of the security plan” in the capital. It also said “all diplomatic corps, embassies and international organizations” dealing with the Iraqi government are “legitimate targets.”
■UNITED KINGDOM
Camilla takes a tumble
Prince Charles’ wife, Camilla, has broken her leg while hillwalking in Scotland, but plans to keep up all her scheduled engagements, a royal spokeswoman said on Thursday. She is likely to wear a plaster cast for about six weeks, by which time the “relatively minor” injury should have healed, experts said. “While hillwalking in slippery conditions in Scotland, the Duchess of Cornwall took a tumble and hurt her leg,” a spokeswoman for Clarence House said after the accident on Wednesday. Camilla was said to be comfortable and philosophical about the accident, the spokeswoman said. “The Duchess is cheerful and it’s a case of ‘Life goes on — it could be worse,’” she 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
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
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