JAPAN
N Korean boat gets lost
A small boat believed to be from North Korea wandered into territorial waters, carrying three men and a dead body. The coast guard said yesterday that the three men aboard the boat were being fed and questioned. Other details were not immediately available. Media reports quoted the men as saying they had gotten lost while fishing and wanted to return to North Korea — meaning they were not defectors. The reports also said the body was that of a fourth passenger who died a few days ago while at sea.
JAPAN
Old reactors to close
Tokyo says it will soon require atomic reactors to be shut down after 40 years of use to improve safety following the nuclear crisis set off by last year’s tsunami. Concern about aging reactors has been growing because the three units at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant that went into meltdown following the tsunami in March last year were built starting in 1967. Among other reactors at least 40 years old are those at the Tsuruga and Mihama plants, construction of which started in 1970. Many more of the nation’s 54 reactors will reach the 40-year mark in coming years.
CHINA
Tibetans self-immolate
London-based Free Tibet says two people have set themselves on fire in Sichuan Province in the latest in a series of apparent self--immolations in protest at Beijing’s rule. The activist group said witnesses saw a man set himself on fire on Friday near a monastery in Aba Prefecture. It said security forces put out the flames and took the man away. His condition is unknown. Free Tibet says someone else died at about the same time in a self-immolation nearby. It gave no other details. The claims could not be confirmed. A woman at the prefecture government office yesterday said she knew nothing about the incidents.
BELGIUM
Stolen painting returned
A painting by surrealist master Rene Magritte, stolen at gunpoint two years ago, has been returned after the thieves apparently failed to find a buyer, the Magritte museum in Brussels said on Friday. The work, titled Olympia, was stolen in September 2009 by two armed gunmen from Magritte’s former home, which is open as a museum by appointment only. Said to be worth about 3 million euros (US$3.8 million) at the time, experts had said the highly recognizable work would be difficult to sell. More than two years later, a person contacted an expert working with the insurance company and offered to hand it back, museum curator Andre Garitte said. “They’d visibly understood they wouldn’t be able to sell it because it was too well-known. Luckily they didn’t destroy it.”
UNITED KINGDOM
Bletchley Park to be listed
The government has acted to protect a crumbling piece of wartime — and computing — history. The government said on Friday that it has given protected status to the derelict Block C at Bletchley Park, the site northwest of London where mathematicians and cryptographers toiled in secret to crack Nazi communications codes. Historians believe their work shortened the war by as much as two years. The steel-and-concrete Block C contained high-speed data processing machines that helped the British crack Germany’s Enigma encryption device. Heritage Minister John Penrose said on Friday that Block C “can be viewed as the birthplace of modern information technology.”
UNITED STATES
Paul disavows attack on rival
Republican White House hopeful Ron Paul on Friday repudiated an ad, made by a supporter, that attacks rival Jon Huntsman over his ties to China and suggests he was brainwashed by Beijing. “I haven’t looked at it, but I understand it’s an ugly ad and I’ve disavowed it,” Paul told reporters after a rally ahead of New Hampshire’s nominating primary on Tuesday, adding: “Obviously, it was way, way out of order.” The ad, posted on YouTube by “NHLiberty4Paul,” shows footage of Huntsman, who served as President Barack Obama’s first envoy to China, speaking Mandarin and holding his adoptive daughters. The ad features Gracie — whom the Huntsmans adopted after she was found abandoned at a Chinese vegetable market aged two months — and Asha, who was abandoned in a rural Indian village. Interspersed among the images are short text messages, including: “The Manchurian candidate: What’s he hiding?” “American values, Or Chinese?” “Weak on China? Wonder Why?” “American Values and Liberty: Vote Ron Paul,” the ad ends.
UNITED STATES
Diner bars politicians
With Republican presidential hopefuls blitzing New Hampshire ahead of its critical primary on Tuesday, one small eatery in coastal Portsmouth has had it with gladhanding campaigners disrupting diners. So the hand-drawn, red-white-and-blue sign on the door of the 28-seat Colby’s Breakfast and Lunch restaurant declares: “No Politicians No Exceptions.” The Portsmouth Herald newspaper reported on Thursday that Colby’s manager Jessica Labrie made and posted the sign on Tuesday after patrons complained about the steady stream of politicians stopping in to court voters. “They make a big deal when they come in here,” the newspaper quoted her as saying. “You can watch all this stuff on the news, but when you’re here eating breakfast, you don’t want to hear it.” Texas Governor Rick Perry, Representative Michele Bachmann and former Louisiana governor Buddy Roemer stopped by the restaurant over the past few months, it said.
MEXICO
Casino arson suspect caught
Authorities said on Friday they had captured an alleged Zetas drug gang member who is suspected of having masterminded an arson attack on a casino that killed 52 people in the northern city of Monterrey last year. Baltazar Saucedo Estrada, alias “Mataperros” or “Dog killer,” ordered the Aug. 25 attack on the Casino Royale, Nuevo Leon State prosecutor Adrian de la Garza said at a news conference. Saucedo Estrada was the third to be caught of five Zeta chiefs allegedly responsible for one of the deadliest attacks in more than five years of brutal drug violence in the country. Authorities had offered more than US$1 million for information leading to his capture. Saucedo Estrada said he received orders to burn the casino because the owner refused to pay protection money, according to Jorge Domene, Nuevo Leon security spokesman.
HAITI
Cholera has killed 7,000
Nearly 7,000 people have now died from cholera in the country in an epidemic that has become one of the worst of recent decades, a top health official said on Friday. Pan American Health Organization Deputy Director Jon Kim Andrus said that as of last month, on top of the deaths, the Haitian government had reported more than 520,000 cholera cases, with 200 new sufferers appearing each day. Andrus said it was “one of the largest cholera outbreaks in modern history to affect a single country.”
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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