AUSTRIA
Fewer journalists slain
A total of 102 journalists were killed last year, eight fewer than the year before, the International Press Institute (IPI) said on Monday in its annual World Press Freedom Review. Asia, where 40 reporters were slain, was the most dangerous region in the world for journalists, followed by Latin America where 32 perished, the institute said. Pakistan, with 16 deaths, was the most lethal country in the world. Mexico and Honduras, meanwhile, accounted for almost a quarter of all killings, with 12 and 10 deaths. “Although the number of journalists who died in 2010 represented a drop from 2009’s all-time high [of 110 deaths], it was in some ways worse than previous tallies because no large number could be tied to a major war or a single high-fatality incident,” the Vienna-based IPI, which has kept a so-called death watch since 1997, said in a statement.
MALDIVES
Violent protests continue
The government yesterday blamed the opposition for a third night of violent protests over rising prices, the latest round in a long fight between the reformist president and the predecessor whose autocratic 30-year reign he upended. Opposition and government supporters clashed before dawn during street protests which began over the weekend, led by a faction of the Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party that ruled under former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. Police made several arrests and used tear gas to disperse the crowds, spokesman Ahmed Shiyam said. The opposition says it will not stop until President Mohamed Nasheed steps down over skyrocketing prices and plans to float the local currency.
ROMANIA
US missile deal reached
Bucharest and the US have agreed to deploy elements of a future missile defense shield at Deveselu airbase in the south, President Traian Basescu said yesterday. The airbase, which will remain under Romanian command, will host an average of 200 US troops and up to a maximum of 500. The two nations have been negotiating for more than a year on the deployment of ballistic missile interceptors, which should be operational by 2015.
SOUTH KOREA
Doctors puzzled by needle
Former president Roh Tae-woo was admitted to hospital with a bad cough and ended up on the operating table to remove an acupuncture needle from his right lung. Media reports said Roh, 78, was released from Seoul National University Hospital on Monday after surgery to remove the 6.5cm needle. Doctors are puzzled how the needle ended up in his lung, and acupuncturists say that none of their procedures involved penetrating the lung.
THAILAND
King undergoes spinal tap
King Bhumibol Adulyadej, 83, who has been in hospital since September 2009, underwent a spinal tap to remove cerebrospinal fluid, the Royal Household said in a rare statement on his health on Monday. It said the king had recovered from a lung infection, but continues to stay in hospital for physical rehabilitation and to ensure good nutrition.
ITALY
Wanted mobster caught
Authorities say police have captured the No. 2 boss of a bloody Camorra crime clan near Caserta after six years on the run. Mario Caterino was arrested on Monday in a house in Casal di Principe. Caterino had been sentenced to life in prison for homicide.
MEXICO
Community takes on loggers
Around 17,000 people from an indigenous group in the west have blocked access to their community and declared a “state of siege” against armed groups protecting illegal loggers, a spokesman said on Monday. “It’s a desperate measure” faced with the lack of security from federal authorities, a spokesman for the Purepecha community told a news conference in Mexico City, wearing a face mask to remain anonymous. It was a “self-imposed state of siege” that started on April 15 in the village of Cheran, in Michoacan State. The community started the blockade after armed men fired on some of its members after they captured illegal loggers to hand them over to the authorities, he added. An armed group entered the community on April 27 and killed two people. Since 2008, nine have been killed and five others have disappeared, he said. Illegal loggers have deforested 80 percent of about 12,000 hectares of the region’s forests in more than three years, according to the community.
UNITED STATES
Eaters try ‘Lady Cheese’
A New York gallery offered adventurous eaters on Sunday the opportunity to sample cheese made from human breast milk, getting mixed reviews and some puzzled looks. The Lady Cheese Shop is a temporary art installation by Miriam Simun, a graduate student at New York University who hopes to use the craft of cheese-making to raise questions about the ethics of modern biotechnologies. She found three nursing women willing to have their milk turned into cheese. Three varieties were available — West Side Funk, Midtown Smoke, described as “creamy and just pure heaven,” and Wisconsin Chew, the taste of which apparently reflected the vegetable-filled diet of the woman who provided its milk. Frances Anderson sampled the cheese while breastfeeding her infant son Luan. “I’m an adventurous eater,” she said. “I know more about the source of this food than going into a supermarket and picking up cheddar cheese. I don’t know what they pumped into that cow.”
CHILE
Cars carry radiation
Officials found traces of radioactivity in tests on about 20 used cars on a ship from South Korea that had been in the vicinity of Japan’s damaged Fukushima atomic plant, a report said on Monday. The report in the daily El Mercurio quoted Iquique customs director Raul Barria as saying the radioactivity did not appear to pose a danger.
ISRAEL
Group arrested near Nablus
Police yesterday arrested a group of Israelis on an illegal trip to a flashpoint religious site where several Jews were shot by Palestinian police last month. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the group was arrested near the contested Joseph’s Tomb site by the northern West Bank city of Nablus. The group appeared to be extremists who arrived at the tomb shortly after an authorized group of around 200 Jewish worshipers prayed there.
UNITED STATES
Men stabbed for signing
Police say two hearing-impaired men were stabbed at a bar when their sign language was mistaken for gang signs. Court records show that 45-year-old Barbara Lee and 19-year-old Marco Ibanez are facing aggravated battery charges in the Saturday night attack in Hallandale Beach, Florida. Police say none of their injuries are life-threatening.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
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