INDIA
Nine rebels killed: police
Security forces killed nine suspected Maoist guerrillas yesterday in a gunfight in the east during a search of the area for rebels, police said. The nine rebels were shot dead in an hour-long dawn battle in a forest in the Latehar District of the mineral-rich state of Jharkhand, where Maoists have a heavy presence. “Nine Maoists were killed by security forces near Luhur forest in Latehar,” Jharkhand police chief Neyaz Ahmad said by telephone. Arms and ammunition were retrieved from the battle site, said Kuldeep Diwedi, another senior Latehar policeman.
INDIA
Californian immolates self
A man from California has died after setting himself on fire in an abandoned Buddhist center in the northwest, leaving a cryptic suicide note that blamed his death on “cruel incidents” in his homeland and India, police said on Thursday. The charred body of Jeff Knaebel, 71, was found on Wednesday by villagers at a meditation site in Rajasthan state, police superintendent Mohan Singh said. “I am killing myself because of cruel incidents in both the US and in India,” Knaebel wrote in a note, according to police. The note contained a request that only police handle his body and instructions that the 45,000 rupees (US$1,000) in his bag be given to the poor. Knaebel had renounced US citizenship in 2009 and had been living in India since 1995. Police said he had recently been visiting villages in Rajasthan to talk to people about the teachings of Mohandas Gandhi. He reached the Buddhist center in Virat Nagar three days ago, police said.
INDIA
Police raid monastery
Police have raided the monastery of a senior Tibetan monk seen as a possible successor to the Dalai Lama and have seized several suitcases full of cash, reports said yesterday. A man said to be an aide of the Karmapa, one of Tibetan Buddhism’s most revered figures who fled to India in 1999, was arrested during the search on Thursday at the monastery in the northern hillstation of Dharamshala. The Express newspaper said the cash — Indian and foreign — was stuffed inside four large suitcases that were taken away by police, while PTI news agency said there were six bags. The reports put the amount of cash seized at between 400,000 rupees and 35 million rupees. The raid was in connection with the arrest of two other people carrying large quantities of cash in Himachal Pradesh on Wednesday, the reports said. The Karmapa’s office did not respond to enquiries.
JAPAN
More elderly shoplifters
Shoplifting by elderly people hit a record high last year, police and news reports said on Thursday. The number of people aged 65 or older charged with shoplifting rose by 343 to an all-time high of 27,362 last year, the National Police Agency and news reports said. The figure accounted for 26.1 percent of all shoplifters last year, almost matching the 27.1 percent for teenagers. The figure for elderly shoplifters may reflect a gain in the number of aging people who have lost families and jobs, factors that usually help maintain self-control, Jiji Press said, quoting a senior agency official. More than 70 percent of the elderly shoplifters said they resorted to stealing simply because they wanted to possess and consume things or food, while others cited as a motivation poverty and having fun, Jiji said. The nation’s total number of shoplifting cases reported to police last year slid 1 percent to 148,375, police said.
UNITED KINGDOM
PM mulls appointing mouser
Prime Minister David Cameron has a new group of foes to contend with — they have cunning, stealth and look determined to force their way into his home on London’s famous Downing Street. It’s not the opposition Labour Party worrying the British leader, but a mischief of rats seen scuttling outside the door of his official residence. The rodents have twice been filmed by television news crews in recent days, prompting Cameron to draft in a specialist rat-catcher and to consider whether Downing Street needs a new pet cat. Cameron’s spokesman Steve Field told reporters no decision had been taken on how to handle the unwanted visitors, but said “a pro-cat faction within the building” was seeking to persuade the British leader to acquire a new pet. Previous prime ministers have appointed a Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office, the unofficial title bestowed to feline residents at Downing Street.
UNITED KINGDOM
Beatles graduate ‘so proud’
A Canadian woman has become the first person to graduate with a Masters degree in Beatles studies. Former Miss Canada finalist Mary-Lu Zahalan-Kennedy was one of the first 12 students to sign up for the Liverpool Hope University course on the Fab Four when it began in 2009 and was the first to graduate, the university said on Wednesday. “I am so proud of my achievement,” Zahalan-Kennedy said. “The course was challenging, enjoyable and it provided a great insight into the impact the Beatles had and still have to this day across all aspects of life.” The launch of the unique MA in Beatles, Popular Music and Society was a world first when it took its first class.
SERBIA
TV mogul in poisoning claim
The Balkans’ biggest TV mogul announced on Thursday that he has been intentionally poisoned and Serbian police said they are investigating the claim. The 44-year-old Zeljko Mitrovic, a former ally of late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, has been hospitalized in Germany for four weeks. Earlier he was hospitalized in Belgrade for some time, sparking intense speculation about what was wrong with his health. On Thursday, his TV Pink station, the biggest in the Balkans, gave some answers. It reported that arsenic, lead and benzene had been found in Mitrovic’s blood by the hospital near Hamburg and said he suffers from aplastic anemia, a potentially fatal blood disorder in which the body’s bone marrow doesn’t produce enough new blood cells. The station and the mogul said he has been poisoned for a protracted period, but did not elaborate on when or where it happened — or who they suspect did it. “I suspect everyone, except my wife and children,” Mitrovic told Belgrade B-92 radio.
RUSSIA
God not in church guide
God is absent from a new spiritual guide the Russian Orthodox Church is drafting in tandem with Russia’s ruling party, a newspaper said on Thursday. Instead justice, patriotism and solidarity top the list of the guideline, dubbed “Eternal Values: The foundation of Russian Identity,” which the Church is to publish with the dominant United Russia party, headed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Church spokesman Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin said the principles were based on how strongly they are “rooted in God’s truth and in the life experiences that remain constant.”
CUBA
Dissident arrested again
Police have again arrested dissident Guillermo Farinas, last year’s Sakharov rights prize winner, one day after he was detained for seven hours, his mother told reporters in Havana on Thursday. The high-profile dissident was detained with about 10 other political activists, his mother Alicia Hernandez said. Farinas went on a 135-day hunger strike last year to draw attention to the challenges faced by dissidents of the Americas’ only one-party communist regime. The Sakharov prize winner was also detained on Wednesday afternoon and released around midnight. He said police did not mistreat him.
BRAZIL
Man locked wife in basement
A man has been arrested on suspicion of keeping his wife locked in a squalid basement for 16 years while he lived with another woman in the same house. Acting on a tip, police on Wednesday found Sebastiana Aparecida Groppo, 64, in the cellar of the house in the city of Sorocaba in Sao Paulo state. The floor of the roughly 12m2 cellar was littered with feces and dead cockroaches, Sorocaba police inspector Ana Luiza Salomone told reporters on Thursday. “She was found without clothes wrapped up in a blanket,” said Salomone, adding that the windows had been shuttered and were covered in mold. Joao Batista Groppo and the woman who had been living with him were both arrested on charges of illegal imprisonment. The husband, also 64, told police that he had locked up his wife of 42 years because she was mentally ill and aggressive.
UNITED STATES
Miami piano mystery solved
The mystery of the black baby grand piano that appeared upright on a tiny sand bar in Miami’s Biscayne Bay, capturing world attention, appears to have been solved. Teenager Nicholas Harrington told the Miami Herald that he carried out the prank with his father’s help in what began as a plan to make a video to get into art school in Manhattan. Harrington had the idea of using it as a prop in a student video that he could submit as part of his application to art school. He wanted to film the piano on the sandbar. Before he got it there, they had a raucous New Year’s eve party at their house, and a crowd of about 100 began chanting: “Burn the piano.” The Harringtons obliged, dousing it with flammable liquid. The next day they lowered the scorched piano into a boat and took it out to the sandbar where they burned it again. And there it sat, a strange new object in the bay and the subject of curiosity of condominium dwellers on shore until a woman took a boat out to see for herself, and took dozens of photographs.
UNITED STATES
Scalded woman wins suit
A jury has awarded US$1.2 million to a woman in Buford, Georgia, who said she was scalded by 88°C water that shot out of a convenience store’s cappuccino machine. Attorney Nelson Tyrone III told the Gwinnett Daily Post newspaper that the woman, 52-year-old Cynthia Nance, was burned on Halloween night in 2007 at a QuikTrip convenience store. The company said in an e-mail to reporters on Thursday that Nance’s injury resulted from a rare accident. QuikTrip says it has since replaced the cappuccino machines at all its stores. Tyrone said Nance was burned on her hand and arm as she held her cup near the machine. He said she could require an electronic implant to correct nerve damage caused by the burns. Both sides said the money was to be used for Nance’s future medical expenses.
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Cambodia’s government on Wednesday said that it had arrested and extradited to China a tycoon who has been accused of running a huge online scam operation. The Cambodian Ministry of the Interior said that Prince Holding Group chairman Chen Zhi (陳志) and two other Chinese citizens were arrested and extradited on Tuesday at the request of Chinese authorities. Chen formerly had dual nationality, but his Cambodian citizenship was revoked last month, the ministry said. US prosecutors in October last year brought conspiracy charges against Chen, alleging that he had been the mastermind behind a multinational cyberfraud network, used his other businesses to launder
RSS