MALAYSIA
Saudi journalist detained
Police said they detained a Saudi journalist who apparently fled his country after being accused of insulting the Prophet Mohammed on Twitter. Jeddah-based newspaper columnist Hamza Kashgari triggered an uproar in his country this month after tweeting remarks about the prophet that many considered offensive. Kashgari was held on arrival at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Thursday, a federal police official said yesterday on condition of anonymity.
JAPAN
Heavy snowfall continues
The north was bracing for more heavy snow yesterday, as severe winter weather continues to cause misery across a large part of the country, claiming at least 83 lives so far. Forecasters were predicting up to 60cm of snow would fall in parts of the northernmost island of Hokkaido and in the north of Honshu over 24 hours. In Sukayu, Aomori Prefecture, where the temperature dropped to minus-12.8°C yesterday, more than 4m of snow is already lying on the ground. In Hijiori, Yamagata Prefecture, where the average annual snowfall is 2.6m, there is already 4m of snow. The snow has extended over a wide area of the country with Kasumi, Hyogo Prefecture, getting 82cm, nearly seven times its annual average.
CHINA
Officials’ speeches to be cut
Long-winded politicians in Guangzhou may find themselves reined in, as city officials consider restricting the length of interminable speeches. Wan Qingliang (萬慶良), the city’s Chinese Communist Party secretary, has put forward a proposal that would require officials to limit their speeches to under an hour at key meetings and less than 30 minutes in less important gatherings, a media report said. “I have already set an example myself by finishing my speech at 58 minutes,” Wan was quoted as saying by the Guangzhou Daily. Officials often make speeches that go on for hours, delivered in a monotone, and audience members are sometimes caught dozing off, even in big events broadcast live.
AUSTRALIA
Drug ring smashed
Police said yesterday they smashed a “sophisticated” drug ring smuggling narcotics from Iran in fruit juice cartons, seizing A$25 million (US$26.8 million) of heroin and methamphetamine. New South Wales Organised Crime Squad arrested a 43-year-old Iranian-born man they believe was the head of a major drug distribution network after raiding the storage facilities of a Sydney food import business this week. They found nearly 50kg of heroin and more than 21kg of methamphetamine. “That’s a significant seizure, taking almost 250,000 deals of heroin and more than 200,000 deals of ice off the street,” squad director Mal Lanyon said. More than A$300,000 in cash, a large range of jewelry and valuable securities were also seized.
MYANMAR
‘Saffron’ monk detained
A prominent Buddhist monk was detained for questioning yesterday, less than month since he was freed from jail where he was sent for leading an anti-government uprising, an official said. Gambira was one of hundreds of political prisoners released last month, cutting short a 68-year jail term imposed for his key role in the 2007 “Saffron Revolution.” Since he was freed, Gambira has breached regulations by breaking into monasteries that were closed by the government following the mass monk-led demonstrations, the official said on condition of anonymity.
EGYPT
Three die in sub accident
A German couple and their child drowned in a tourist submarine accident on Thursday off Egypt’s Red Sea resort town of Hurghada, security officials said. Thirteen other tourists of different nationalities were rescued. Egyptian state TV said a preliminary tourism police investigation found that the submarine had collided with a coral reef, shattering a glass partition and filling the vessel with water. Four of the rescued tourists were taken to hospital, state TV reported. Millions of tourists visit Egypt’s Red Sea resorts, especially Sharm el-Sheikh, for its beaches and rich underwater life, but in December 2010, a mysterious spate of shark attacks killed one tourist and injured four others, forcing the closure of Sharm el-Sheikh’s beaches for several weeks.
SOMALIA
Rapper visits survivors
Rapper 50 Cent is teaming up with the World Food Program to see firsthand the effects of hunger in Somalia and Kenya. The rap star flew to Dolo, Somalia, on Wednesday. Tens of thousands of women and children have fled there over the past year to flee a devastating famine that has killed tens of thousands of people across Somalia. The World Food Program said the rapper, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, has committed to provide a billion meals for the hungry and he is donating to the program US$0.10 from every sale of a new energy drink called Street King that he is promoting. The UN last week declared an end to Somalia’s six-month famine, though it said tens of thousands of people still need food aid to survive. The British government estimates that between 50,000 and 100,000 people have died from the famine’s effects.
SOMALIA
Al-Shabaab joins al-Qaeda
The Somalian militant group al-Shabaab has formally joined al-Qaeda, according to a video translation released of a message from al-Qaeda’s leader. Ayman al-Zawahiri gave “glad tidings” that al-Shabaab had joined al-Qaeda, according to the translation of the 15-minute video, which was released on Thursday, by the Site Intelligence group. “Today, I have glad tidings for the Muslim Ummah that will please the believers and disturb the disbelievers, which is the joining of the Shabaab al-Mujahideen Movement in Somalia to Qaedat al-Jihad, to support the jihadi unity against the Zio-Crusader campaign and their assistants amongst the treacherous agent rulers,” he said. Al-Shabaab leaders have pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda in the past, releasing a video in 2009 called At Your Service Osama! However, the new al-Zawahiri video — which was posted on an Islamic Internet forum on Thursday — is the first formal welcoming of al-Shabaab by the new al-Qaeda leader.
TURKEY
Woman blows herself up
A woman who police suspect of having been a suicide bomber died in Istanbul late on Thursday after explosives that she was carrying went off, media reports said yesterday. The woman was torn to bits by the explosion that occurred in the Sancaktepe neighborhood of the city, according to NTV television. There were no immediate reports of anyone else being hurt in the explosion. Police suspect that the woman, whose identity has not yet been revealed, was acting on behalf of the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party. The party took up arms in the southeast of the country in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed about 45,000 lives. It is labeled a terrorist outfit by Ankara and much of the international community.
UNITED STATES
Marines play down photo
The Marine Corps was once again in damage control mode after a photograph surfaced of a sniper team in Afghanistan posing in front of a flag with a logo resembling that of the notorious Nazi SS — a special unit that murdered millions of Jewish people, gypsies and others. The corps said in a statement that using the symbol was not acceptable, but the marines in the photograph taken in September 2010 will not be disciplined because investigators determined it was a naive mistake. The marines believed the SS symbol was meant to represent sniper scouts and never intended to be associated with a racist organization, said Major Gabrielle Chapin, a spokeswoman at Camp Pendleton, where the Marines were based.
UNITED STATES
Manning arraignment set
An army private accused of leaking classified material to the anti-secrecy Web site WikiLeaks is scheduled to be back in a military courtroom later this month. The arraignment for Army Private First Class Bradley Manning is planned at Fort Meade on Feb. 23. Manning faces a general court-martial on 22 counts, including aiding the enemy. He could be imprisoned for life if convicted of that charge. Military prosecutors say Manning downloaded and transferred to WikiLeaks almost half a million sensitive battlefield reports, hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and video of a deadly 2007 army helicopter attack.
UNITED STATES
Salvagers denied booty
A Supreme Court justice on Thursday refused to grant a Florida company’s request to block a lower court’s order to return treasure to the Spanish government that was salvaged from a ship sunk in 1804. Justice Clarence Thomas rejected without comment the emergency appeal from Odyssey Marine Exploration, which recovered 17 tonnes of silver and gold from the wreck of the Spanish ship Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes. The company was trying to overturn a Feb. 1 decision by a federal court in Atlanta that ordered the treasure returned. The lower court said the ship, which was sunk during a battle with a British fleet, remained the property of Spain. The ship was found in May 2007 at a depth of 518m in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Portugal. It was returning from Peru. The company hid the discovery under the code name of “Black Swan Project” while it removed the treasure to an undisclosed location.
UNITED STATES
Madonna’s stalker missing
A man who was convicted of stalking and threatening pop star Madonna in the 1990s walked away unnoticed from the California mental health facility where he was being held and remains at large, Los Angeles police said on Thursday. Robert Dewey Hoskins, 54, was sentenced to 10 years behind bars in 1996 after being arrested for scaling a wall around the singer’s home in the Hollywood Hills and threatening to slit her throat. Madonna testified during Hoskins’ trial that she had nightmares about the homeless man from Oregon after seeing him near her home in 1995. She said her bodyguard told her Hoskins said she was supposed to be his wife, and “if he couldn’t have me, he was going to slice my throat from ear to ear.” Upon his release from prison, Hoskins was sent to a California hospital. He was eventually let go, but was arrested again in July last year and sent to a different health facility in the Los Angeles-area community of Norwalk.
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
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