SOUTH AFRICA
‘Resurrected’ singer arrested
Police arrested a man on Monday after he claimed to be a popular musician who died in 2009, sparking a frenzy among the singer’s fans. Claiming that he was the late Zulu traditional music singer Khulekani Khumalo, also known as “Mgqumeni,” the man arrived at the musician’s home last week at Nqutu village in KwaZulu-Natal Province. News that the musician had returned spread like wildfire, prompting fans to descend on his home. The man claimed that he had fallen victim to witchcraft, but that he was rescued by ancestors. He did not die, he added, but was kept with zombies in a place he could not recall. “The man is currently in custody pending a criminal investigation. Detectives have been questioning the man this morning and are conducting further investigation,” police spokesman Jay Naicker said. “The arrest follows developments yesterday when the man made his first public appearance at Nqutu,” he added. The man is to appear in court tomorrow.
SOMALIA
Aid worker thanks SEALs
A US aid worker rescued by US Navy SEALs last month said she was thankful for the support she had received. Thirty-two-year-old Jessica Buchanan was rescued last month along with a 60-year-old Danish man. The two were working with a de-mining unit when gunmen kidnapped them in October. In a statement issued from her home in Goode, Virginia, Buchanan said she was overwhelmed and grateful for the encouragement she and her family had received from around the world. The US government said the raid was prompted by Buchanan’s deteriorating health. In the statement, Buchanan asked for privacy as she focuses on everyday life and healing. She thanked US President Barack Obama and those who planned and orchestrated her rescue.
ITALY
Vatican targets pedophiles
Catholic clergy must report pedophile priests to police, a top Vatican official told the Holy See’s first conference on the sex abuse crisis on Monday, but victims’ groups demanded the Vatican face up to its past and publish its files on abuse. Pope Benedict XVI called for a “profound renewal of the church at every level” in a message delivered to senior churchmen summoned to discuss the Church’s handling of sex abuse cases and accusations the Vatican had encouraged secrecy. The scandal has led to costly legal action, is blamed for an exodus of believers in some European states, including the pope’s native Germany and damaged its moral standing in hitherto staunchly Catholic countries. Cardinal William Levada, the Vatican’s head of doctrine, said clergy guilty of abuses would have to face the secular legal system, not just the canon law which governs church affairs.
UNITED KINGDOM
Police probe racist e-mails
Police say they are investigating racist e-mails sent to a top Church of England official after the Uganda-born cleric made comments opposing gay marriage. North Yorkshire Police said on Monday that the e-mails sent to Archbishop of York John Sentamu contained “racially offensive statements” and are being investigated as potential hate crimes. Sentamu, the second-most senior cleric in the church, said in a recent newspaper interview that the government should not overrule the Bible by allowing same-sex marriage. Last week, about 70 protesters held placards and chanted songs outside York Minster to denounce Sentamu’s words.
UNITED STATES
Ex-intern admits JFK affair
A former White House intern is speaking out about an 18-month affair she had with former president John F. Kennedy while he was in office, revealing intimate details in a new book to be published today. Mimi Alford, who was 19 when she started her internship at the White House in 1962, discussed her secret sexual affair with the president in her book Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy. She told NBC that she decided to write the book to stop her secret becoming “deadly.” Alford discussed details, including swimming with the president just four days into her internship and doing her homework en route to Washington to have sex with Kennedy.
UNITED STATES
BTJunkie shuts itself down
BTJunkie, a popular file-sharing indexing site, said on Monday it was voluntarily shutting down, less than three weeks after the closure of Megaupload in a crackdown on piracy of music, films and other materials. “This is the end of the line my friends,” BTJunkie said in a brief message posted on the homepage of the site along with the dates of its existence: “2005-2012.” “We’ve been fighting for years for your right to communicate, but it’s time to move on.” Britain-based BTJunkie provided a search engine for BitTorrent files and was one of the top five torrent sites with “dozens of millions of users a month,” according to TorrentFreak, a Web site which covers file-sharing news. TorrentFreak quoted the unidentified founder of BTJunkie as saying that BTJunkie’s decision to close down stemmed partly from recent legal actions against Megaupload and The Pirate Bay.
MEXICO
Gunmen confess to killings
A trio of gunmen arrested over the weekend confessed to helping execute eight men last month because the victims had not bought their drugs from the Zetas gang, state officials said on Monday. The high-profile Jan. 26 killing unleashed a broad police sweep in which 204 people were detained for questioning. The three men said that a Zetas member was at “The Eternity” bar in Monterrey where the young men had been partying, and discovered that the bags of drugs they were carrying had the seal of a rival gang, a Nuevo Leon state official said. Gunmen forced the victims to leave the bar and drive to central Monterrey, where they were then forced to kneel in front of a wall and shot in the head with AK-47s.
UNITED STATES
Man blows up self, sons
A man in a custody battle for his two young sons after the disappearance of his wife in 2009 blew up his house in Washington state, killing himself and the children, authorities said. Police said Josh Powell set his home in Graham, Washington, ablaze using an accelerant, killing himself and his five and seven-year-old sons. Officials said Powell, who has been a person of interest in his wife’s 2009 disappearance from their Utah home during a snowstorm, locked his doors and set the deadly blaze, leaving the social worker outside, powerless to intervene. A Child Protective Services worker dropped off the boys for what was to have been a supervised court-ordered visit. She was about to follow the children into the house when Powell blocked her entrance and locked the door, agency spokeswoman Sherry Hill said. The worker called her supervisor from her car, reporting that she had smelled gas in the house. She called emergency officials, but before they arrived “the house blew up,” Hill told the Los Angeles Times.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
Cook Islands officials yesterday said they had discussed seabed minerals research with China as the small Pacific island mulls deep-sea mining of its waters. The self-governing country of 17,000 people — a former colony of close partner New Zealand — has licensed three companies to explore the seabed for nodules rich in metals such as nickel and cobalt, which are used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Despite issuing the five-year exploration licenses in 2022, the Cook Islands government said it would not decide whether to harvest the potato-sized nodules until it has assessed environmental and other impacts. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and
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