INDIA
Tibetan protesters detained
Police detained about three dozen Tibetan exiles protesting outside the Chinese embassy in New Delhi yesterday to mark the anniversary of the failed uprising that sent the Dalai Lama into exile in India. The protesters, wearing yellow T-shirts and waving red and blue Tibetan flags, chanted “Free Tibet” and “We want freedom,” as they rushed toward the embassy. They were blocked by police, dragged to a bus and taken to a nearby police station for questioning. A law prohibits more than four people from gathering in the area around the embassy. “We don’t have freedom in Tibet. Our brothers and sisters in Tibet are highly oppressed under the cruel Chinese rule,” shouted Tenzin, a Tibetan activist who gave only his first name.
PHILIPPINES
Thief leaves apology
A thief left a letter of apology at a pawnshop after cleaning out its vaults and making off with more than US$16,000 worth of pawned valuables, police said yesterday. Detectives were hunting for a former employee of the Del Madel pawnshop, whose staff discovered the break-in — along with the letter — when they returned to work on Monday, provincial police chief Cornelio Defensor said. The owners of the shop told police the supposed letterwriter was a former employee whose penmanship and signature they recognized.
CHINA
Call to ban shark trade
A member of the National People’s Congress has proposed a ban on the trade in shark fins, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday said Wednesday. Scientists blame the practice of shark-finning — slicing off the fins of live animals and then throwing them back in the water to die — for a worldwide collapse in shark populations. “Only legislation can stop shark fin trading and reduce the killings of sharks,” Xinhua quoted Ding Liguo (丁立國), a billionaire delegate to the congress, as saying. China should lead the world in banning the trade because 95 percent of the world’s shark fins are consumed in mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, he said. Enormous profits generated by the shark fin trade have led to over-fishing and the brutal slaughter of sharks, with some 30 species near extinction, he said. “People are mistaken by the supposed nutritional value of shark fin,” Ding said. “Research shows the nutritional value of shark fin is similar to that of poultry, fish skin, meat and eggs. It is tasteless and its low level nutritional value is hard to absorb by the body.” It was not immediately clear if Ding filed a formal written proposal to the congress or just lodged a verbal request.
SRI LANKA
Groups seek cartoonist
Five rights groups yesterday asked UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to intervene over Prageeth Eknelygoda, a cartoonist for the Lankaenews.com Web site, who disappeared 14 months ago amid threats against independent journalists. The rights groups urged Ban to lobby Colombo authorities about Eknelygoda, who went missing days before the January 2010 presidential elections. “We are well aware that Eknelygoda’s disappearance is symptomatic of a broader malaise in Sri Lanka in which media workers are often victims of repression and violence,” they said in a joint letter to Ban. “Our concerns for his safety are well founded ... Eknelygoda’s disappearance and the failure of the government to conduct a credible investigation underscore the degree of impunity in crimes against journalists that is all too common in Sri Lanka,” they said. “We feel the UN should intervene.”
FRANCE
Gems worth millions found
Police on Tuesday said they had recovered rings and earrings worth millions of euros, part of jewelry stolen in a heist in Paris in December 2008. In all 19 rings, one worth 6 million euros (US$8.3 million), and three pairs of earrings, together worth 14 million euros, were found at a house in the suburbs of Paris, the Paris police headquarters said. They were part of an 85 million euro haul stolen from a shop off the Champs Elysees in the center of Paris on Dec. 4, 2008. Four armed criminals, in some cases disguised as women and knowing the names and personal addresses of some of the shop’s staff and the exact whereabouts of strong boxes, carried out their burglary in the space of 15 minutes. The jewels discovered on Tuesday had been set in concrete and hidden in a drain, police said. Police have detained and questioned 25 people in connection with the theft and say that “half the haul has been recovered.”
UNITED KINGDOM
Judge floors sex offender
A judge grabbed a convicted sex offender by the throat and pinned him to the floor to stop him escaping from court, a trial heard on Tuesday. Judge Douglas Marks Moore, 60, wrestled 34-year-old Paul Reid twice as he attempted to flee from Woolwich Crown Court in London last August. Reid made his desperate bid for freedom after giving evidence in his trial, jurors at the Old Bailey, the central criminal court in London, heard. “One thing stood between Paul Reid and freedom — the judge trying his case,” prosecutor Rupert Gregory said. “As he went through the door his honor Judge Marks Moore grabbed him round the throat to try to bring him down. Together they went down three steps and then Mr Reid broke free and ran down the judge’s corridor. The judge gave chase. Just as Mr Reid was about to open a push-handle fire door, HHJ Marks Moore rugby-tackled him around the throat and waist and brought him crashing to the ground, landing on top of him. He held him there, struggling and protesting, until the prison officers managed to catch up, secure him and return him to custody.” Reid denies attempting to escape from Woolwich Crown Court. The case continues.
SPAIN
Nuns’ cash stash stolen
Police said on Tuesday they are investigating the theft of 1.5 million euros (US$2.08 million) in cash that was kept in plastic bags by nuns at a convent. “The sisters called us on Feb. 28 to say that several doors in the convent had been broken and that a large amount of cash had disappeared,” a police spokeswoman in the northern city of Zaragoza said. She said the nuns kept the 1.5 million euros in cash in plastic bags. “The sisters said that it was money that they had saved over several years,” she said. The sisters at the Santa Lucia convent live largely in seclusion and spend much of their time working on book-binding, their Web site says. One of them sells paintings, which could partly explain the cash, the spokeswoman said.
TURKEY
Snowfall paralyzes country
The Anatolia news agency says heavy snowfall has blocked access to hundreds of remote villages in eastern and northern Turkey and paralyzed life in the Turkish capital. Thousands of people had to walk for kilometers back home on Tuesday evening after their vehicles could not climb hilly parts of Ankara. Television reported hundreds of accidents in the capital but with no serious injuries. Many drivers abandoned their cars, which were quickly buried under snow. Authorities predict the snowfall will continue at least until tomorrow.
UNITED STATES
Dark history exhibit to open
An electric chair and other artifacts of Ohio’s darker history are featured in an upcoming exhibit in the Midwestern state that will restrict younger visitors. “Controversy: Pieces You Don’t Normally See” opens on April 1 at the Ohio Historical Center in Columbus. Children under 17 will not be allowed in unless accompanied by an adult. The show also will include a 19th-century wooden cage for restraining Ohio mental patients, an aluminum mitt that once kept children from sucking their thumbs and a 1920s Ku Klux Klan hooded robe. The Columbus Dispatch reports that the electric chair — nicknamed “Old Sparky” — hasn’t been on view publicly since tours of the old Ohio Penitentiary stopped 80 years ago. The chair was last used for an execution in 1963.
UNITED STATES
Ground zero cafe scrapped
Plans have been scrapped for a restaurant with panoramic views of New York City atop a skyscraper going up at ground zero. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey says there won’t be a new Windows on the World-type restaurant at 1 World Trade Center. That dining institution sat atop one of the original twin towers until it was destroyed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Executive director Chris Ward said: “These things are always money-losers.”
CHILE
Mummies returned
Four pre-Colombian mummies, including two Chinchorro mummies cast as the oldest in the world, have been returned to the nation from a private collection in Switzerland, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday. Officials said the unidentified collector turned the mummies over to the Swiss government, which then repatriated them to Chile. Two of the artifacts are considered among the oldest in the world — from 5,000 BC — and were part of the Chinchorro people in northern Chile. Two other mummies were also returned, including one from around the time of the arrival of Spanish colonists and another from an undetermined time in the pre-Colombian era, according to officials.
UNITED STATES
Oldest bird is a new mother
The oldest known wild bird in the US is a new mother. A few weeks ago a US Fish and Wildlife Service biologist spotted the Laysan albatross that’s at least 60 years old. It was with a chick at Midway Atoll, a remote wildlife refuge 2,100km northwest of Honolulu. A US Geological Survey scientist first banded the seabird as she incubated an egg in 1956. She was estimated to be at least five-years-old at the time. The albatross has since worn out five bird bands. Bruce Peterjohn, the chief of the North American Bird Banding Program, said on Tuesday that the albatross is the oldest wild bird documented by the 90-year-old bird banding program.
UNITED STATES
Comic sells for US$1.1m
The inaugural 1962 comic book to feature Spider-Man netted a superhero-sized US$1.1 million, -ComicConnect.com said on Tuesday. The copy of the Marvel comic book, in excellent condition, sold through the US online auctioneers with a cover that shows the spidery avenger — in his other life known as Peter Parker — swinging from a high building with a man under his arm. Five decades ago, the comic went for just US$0.12. The big sale has been bested only by the US$1.5 million price for Superman’s 1938 debut comic book last year. The 1930s to 1950s are seen as comics’ golden age and surviving copies are keenly collected.
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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