■INDONESIA
Quake rattles Maluku
An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.1 struck North Maluku Province yesterday. There were no immediate reports of damage and no tsunami warning has been issued. The US Geological Survey said the quake was centered near Obi island at a depth of about 53km. The area is about 2,400km east of Jakarta. The Meteorology, Geophysics and Climate Agency measured the quake at magnitude 6.4.
■PAKISTAN
Policemen killed in attack
A suicide attack on a prison van in northwest Pakistan wounded at least 10 policemen yesterday, authorities said. A car bomber targeted the van as it arrived at a jail in Timergarah, before it picked up prisoners to take to nearby Swat Valley, senior police official Shakeel Khan said. No prisoners were in the van at the time. Police were planning to use the van to take some of the militants detained during last year’s military operation in the region, Khan said. Timergarah is in deeply conservative Lower Dir district, which is near the Afghan border. It was a militant stronghold until the middle of last year, when the military launched a major offensive and took it back from insurgents. Sporadic violence has continued.
■UNITED STATES
USS ‘Murtha’ on its way
The Navy is naming its next amphibious ship after the late Pennsylvania congressman John Murtha. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus made the announcement on Friday at the Johnstown-Cambria County Airport in Pennsylvania. Murtha’s family and House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi were in attendance. Murtha, a former Marine, represented the Johnstown area for more than 35 years. He died in February at age 77 from complications of gallbladder surgery. The USS John P. Murtha will be a 10th San Antonio Class Amphibious Transport vessel. With a crew of more than 360, it will transport 700 Marines, their equipment and supplies. Murtha was the first Vietnam War combat veteran elected to Congress.
■MYANMAR
EU puts pressures on junta
The EU hopes to send an “exploratory mission” to discuss with the military junta the country’s upcoming elections, despite controversial voting laws, a diplomatic source said on Friday. The EU also called on military leaders “to cooperate fully” with Piero Fassino, its special envoy to the country, in a text approved by representatives of the 27 EU nations, which will be formally adopted by EU foreign ministers tomorrow. The ministers will express “serious concerns” at new election laws published last month that “do not provide for free and fair election.”
■CHINA
Xinjiang party boss fired
The unpopular Communist Party boss for the restive Xinjiang region was replaced yesterday, months after ethnic riots killed nearly 200 in the sprawling far-western region. State media reports gave no immediate reason for removing Wang Lequan (王樂泉), 65, who had served as party boss in Xinjiang since 1995. He was replaced by Zhang Chunxian (張春賢), who turns 57 next month and has been the party boss in Hunan Province since November 2006. Xinhua news agency said the change was announced by the Central Committee of the Communist Party. It said Wang had been appointed as the deputy secretary of a political committee of the Central Committee. It is not known if he is still a member of the party’s Politburo, the 25-member body near the pinnacle of power in the country.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Accused pilot compensated
The government will compensate an Algerian pilot who was falsely accused of helping the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers, the Ministry of Justice said on Friday. The ministry said that following Court of Appeal rulings that said Lotfi Raissi was wrongly linked with terrorism, Justice Secretary Jack Straw notified Raissi that he was eligible for compensation. Raissi was arrested on Sept. 21, 2001, at his home outside London and jailed for almost five months, accused of helping to train the Sept. 11 pilots, but judges later dismissed the case and concluded there was no evidence to support the allegation that he was involved in terrorism. Raissi said he was delighted to be exonerated and that his life was “destroyed” by the lengthy legal battle.
■UNITED STATES
Somali pirates in court
Eleven Somalis accused of attacking two US Navy ships off the coast of Africa appeared in a federal court in Virginia on charges of piracy on Friday. The defendants did not enter pleas. An interpreter read the charges to them. Magistrate Tommy Miller scheduled a detention hearing next Wednesday and ordered the defendants held until then. They will be assigned defense attorneys later. They appeared in two separate groups: Five are accused of attacking the USS Nicholas and six are accused of attacking the USS Ashland. One man used crutches and his head was wrapped in a bandage. Another used a wheelchair as his leg was amputated just below the knee.
■UGANDA
Methanol behind deaths
Eighty people have died after consuming alcohol laced with methanol, a health officer said on Friday. Some people in the country often consume cheap, homemade liquor, which is sometimes laced with chemicals for potency, which usually causes death. Patrick Tusiime, a health officer in Kabale district near the Rwandan border, said the deaths started three weeks ago but authorities took days to establish the cause because families failed to disclose that victims fell ill after consuming alcohol. Local brewers had mixed large amounts of methanol in Waragi, a gin extracted from bananas, he said. The victims of the poisoned liquor became blind and suffered kidney and liver failure before dying, Tusiime said.
■UNITED STATES
Army vet sentenced for faking
A federal judge has sentenced an Army veteran to six-and-a-half years in prison for bilking the government by faking paralysis to get disability benefits and avoid being deployed to Iraq. US District Judge William Stiehl also ordered Jeffrey Rush to repay more than US$300,000. During his sentencing on Friday, Rush apologized and asked for leniency for his ex-wife, who also pleaded guilty in the scheme and will be sentenced tomorrow. Jeffrey and Amy Rush were accused of fraud and lying to federal agencies. Authorities say the couple stuck to his bogus story that he had lost the use of his legs after a 2004 rollover crash, just weeks before his Army company shipped off to Iraq without him.
■CYPRUS
New leader continues talks
Turkey’s foreign minister says newly elected Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu will continue reunification talks with rival Greek Cypriots. Ahmet Davutoglu said on Friday that Eroglu has Turkey’s full support. Eroglu repeated he would not abandon negotiations. Eroglu, a hardliner, defeated incumbent Mehmet Ali Talat in a poll for the presidency of the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north.
■UNITED STATES
Iran arrests spark concern
The White House said on Friday it feared for the well-being of three Americans detained by Iran since July last year and called for their immediate release. “We were deeply alarmed to learn from the families today of their physical and emotional state of health,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement. Iran said earlier this month it had proof the three held on espionage charges had links to intelligence services. Their families and officials said they were hiking and had accidentally strayed across the border from northern Iraq. Gibbs also criticized Iran for holding the Americans without formal charges or access to legal defense.
■UNITED STATES
Driver pleads guilty to plot
A New York City taxi driver pleaded guilty on Friday of plotting to bomb New York’s subways in what authorities have called the most serious threat to the city since the Sept. 11 attacks. Zarein Ahmedzay is the second Afghan man to plead guilty to the plot. He faces life in prison. Ahmedzay pleaded guilty in federal court in Brooklyn to conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction, conspiring to commit murder in a foreign country and providing material support to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network. Ahmedzay is a former classmate of Najibullah Zazi, who admitted earlier this year that he had received weapons and training from al-Qaeda and plotted a suicide bomb attack on the city’s subways during rush hour.
■UNITED STATES
Former spy pleads not guilty
A former National Security Agency (NSA) official pleaded not guilty on Friday to charges that he lied and obstructed justice in an investigation of leaks of classified information to a newspaper. Prosecutors say Thomas Drake, 53, was a source for many articles about the agency in an unidentified paper, including some that contained classified information. His public defender described the charges as disappointing and unusual considering his client’s long history of service to his country.
■UNITED STATES
Psychic killer gets death
A woman has been sentenced to death for murdering a Vietnamese fortuneteller and her daughter after the mind reader told the woman to get over a lost lover. Tanya Nelson was sentenced on Friday in Santa Ana, California, for masterminding the 2005 murders. Prosecutors say Nelson hired fortuneteller Ha “Jade” Smith to get back her ex-lover and drove across the country from her home state of North Carolina with an accomplice to kill Smith after the soothsayer told her to accept reality. Prosecutors say Smith and her daughter, Anito Vo, were stabbed and their faces and hands were covered in white paint, which may have been an attempt to cover up evidence. Nelson’s accomplice, Phillipe Zamora, was sentenced last month to 25 years to life in prison.
■UNITED STATES
Crazed man diverts flight
A Delta Air Lines flight from Los Angeles to Florida was diverted to New Mexico early on Friday after a passenger sprayed the first-class cabin with a water bottle, tried to open a cabin door and threatened to blow up the aircraft. Crew members and passengers on Delta flight 2148 to Tampa subdued Stanley Dwayne Sheffield, 46. He was taken into federal custody after the plane landed at Albuquerque, New Mexico.
MINERAL DEPOSITS: The Pacific nation is looking for new foreign partners after its agreement with Canada’s Metals Co was terminated ‘mutually’ at the end of last year Pacific nation Kiribati says it is exploring a deep-sea mining partnership with China, dangling access to a vast patch of Pacific Ocean harboring coveted metals and minerals. Beijing has been ramping up efforts to court Pacific nations sitting on lucrative seafloor deposits of cobalt, nickel and copper — recently inking a cooperation deal with Cook Islands. Kiribati opened discussions with Chinese Ambassador Zhou Limin (周立民) after a longstanding agreement with leading deep-sea mining outfit The Metals Co fell through. “The talk provides an exciting opportunity to explore potential collaboration for the sustainable exploration of the deep-ocean resources in Kiribati,” the government said
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
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