CANADA
Former prisoner barred
A former Guantanamo prisoner, who was released without being charged in 2005, was denied boarding on an Air Canada plane from London to Toronto for allegedly posing a security risk, his lawyer said on Saturday. Moazzam Begg, a British human rights activist, was scheduled to speak at a conference on Islamophobia in a Toronto suburb at the invitation of his attorney Dennis Edney, who also currently provides legal counsel to Omar Khadr, a Canadian held at the US naval base of Guantanamo, Cuba. Shortly before embarking on the flight on Friday, airline authorities told Begg that the Canadian High Commission in London refused to allow him to fly because “the plane could be rerouted to the United States.”
CANADA
Potholed cyclist awarded
A cyclist who was seriously injured after falling into a pothole in 2003 will receive almost a US$205,000 check from the city of Montreal, La Presse newspaper reported on Saturday. The woman, Marnie Scanlan, fractured her left shoulder during the fall. Part of her left arm remains incapacitated. Scanlan, a personal trainer for more than three decades, had to change her profession to become a Pilates instructor. On the day of her fall, Scanland said she was biking to a client’s home down a street on a 10-degree slope without pedaling, hands on the breaks, at about 15kph.
UNITED STATES
Moon rock thief arrested
Authorities in southern California have detained a woman accused of trying to sell a moon rock for US$1.7 million. The Riverside County sheriff’s department says the woman was detained on Thursday during an undercover meeting at a Lake Elsinore restaurant where she showed the rock for an undercover NASA investigator. A call to NASA’s Office of Inspector-General was not immediately returned on Friday. Washington considers moon rocks national treasures that cannot be sold. Authorities say NASA had been investigating the case for several months. Authorities haven’t released the identity of the woman or details on how she obtained the rock.
GUATEMALA
Zetas gangsters arrested
Three alleged members of the Zetas drug gang were arrested on Saturday on suspicion of involvement in the killing of 27 farm workers a week ago near the northern border with Mexico. The arrests were made in the city of Quetzaltenango, about 200km west of the capital, police said, with the alleged members identified as 32-year-old Jose Arturo Godoy Artola, Cristofer Jose Cardona Chen, 20, and an unnamed minor. As part of the probe into the brutal killings — 26 of them by beheading — police earlier this week said they had already arrested two suspects in Peten department and detained another suspected Zetas leader in nearby Alta Verapaz.
MEXICO
Ciudad Juarez awarded title
Lawmakers in Chihuahua State on Saturday awarded the drug cartel-plagued border city the title of “Heroic” Ciudad Juarez to honor its role in the 1910 Mexican Revolution. President Felipe Calderon attended a commemoration ceremony at a cultural center and used the occasion to highlight a decrease in crime in the city, which has been one of the world’s most violent cities in recent years. Homicides have fallen 60 percent, to about four daily last month from 11 daily last October.
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
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
‘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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