AFGHANISTAN
Five killed in bus blast
A Taliban roadside bomb tore through a bus on a highway in the south of the country yesterday, killing five passengers, including women and children, officials said. There was no claim of responsibility for the bombing in Ghazni Province, but officials blamed the blast on the “enemies of Afghanistan,” a standard phrase used to refer to the Taliban. “The bus was traveling from Kabul to Kandahar. Along the road near Ghazni city it struck a roadside bomb. Five people were killed and 11 others were injured,” provincial police chief Zarawar Zahid said.
NIGERIA
Pirates fail to board tanker
The London-based International Maritime Bureau says pirates attacked an oil tanker early on Saturday in the Gulf of Guinea off western Africa, but failed to board it or harm its crew. The six pirates chased the tanker and shot at it, slightly damaging the vessel. The watchdog’s brief statement did not name the tanker, say where it was based or where it was traveling. Piracy off the nation’s oil-rich delta has escalated from low-level armed robberies to hijackings and cargo thefts. Some believe militants from the southern delta have turned to piracy.
FRANCE
Two killed in disco shooting
A man shot dead two people at a nightclub in the north of the country yesterday in what appeared to be a revenge attack after he was reportedly kicked out of the disco, police and local officials said. The unidentified man, who is “known to police,” had been thrown out of the Theatro disco in the heart of Lille, but returned at about 3am and opened fire with a -Kalashnikov-style weapon, a local official said. A cloakroom attendant and a customer were killed and another five people, including the club bouncer, were injured and taken to hospital. Police said the attacker, who appeared to have acted alone, fled in a car after the shooting, and that a manhunt had been launched.
INDIA
Pilot insists on seat for mom
The pilot of an Air India passenger plane seated his mother in the cockpit for a domestic flight, refusing to take off without her after he could not get her a free ticket, a report said yesterday. The pilot allegedly demanded that his mother be issued a “dummy boarding card” at Pune airport and placed her in a jump seat reserved for crew for the two-hour flight to the capital New Delhi. “The pilot threatened that he would not fly without his mother” the Sunday Express reported. He said that his mother was sick and he could not leave her at the airport, the paper added. The fully booked flight, with 122 passengers on board, was delayed for 20 minutes because of the incident.
FRANCE
Strauss-Kahn sues magazine
Lawyers for former IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn say they are filing a lawsuit against the French magazine Closer for claiming that Strauss-Kahn and his wife have separated. Anne Sinclair, Strauss-Kahn’s wife of two decades, was stoic last year when he faced allegations by a New York hotel maid of sexual assault. The charges were dropped, but he still faces a civil lawsuit in that case and is being investigated at home for suspected links to an alleged prostitution ring. Closer said Sinclair had asked Strauss-Kahn to leave their home a month ago. It cited no sources. A statement on Friday by Henri Leclerc and two other attorneys said the couple “decided to file suit against this publication for invasion of privacy.”
BRAZIL
Church losing critical mass
Less than two-thirds of the public identify themselves as Catholics, marking a record decline in what is considered to be the world’s largest Catholic country, new figures showed on Friday. Just over 64 percent of the population of 191 million identifies itself as Catholic, the figures from the 2010 census show. In the year 2000, when the last census was carried out, Catholics comprised almost 74 percent of the population, down significantly from almost 92 percent in 1970. Meanwhile, the number of Christian evangelists has risen, up roughly 7 percent to 22.2 percent from 15.4 percent in 2000. Eight percent of reported being atheist in 2010.
PUERTO RICO
Island-wide power failure
A major power outage has been reported across most of the island. A spokesman for the state-owned Electric Energy Authority said dozens of municipalities are without power. On Friday a “big problem” was identified at the main power station in the capital of San Juan, but authorities still do not know what exactly happened, he said. A union that represents electric workers says 75 percent of the island is without power. About 3.7 million people live in Puerto Rico. The outage comes amid heavy thunderstorms and has caused accidents across the US territory.
UNITED STATES
Fake cigarette racket
A Chinese man faces charges that he illegally smuggled more than US$1 million worth of counterfeit Marlboro cigarettes into the country. Rhode Island US Attorney Peter Neronha announced the indictment against 32-year-old Lin Xiao Wei on Friday. Prosecutors say he was arrested in Miami on June 4 after federal agents arranged to buy a cargo container containing 17 pallets of counterfeit Marlboro cigarettes. Authorities say the shipping documentation claimed the container contained leather products.
COLOMBIA
Volcano prompts evacuation
Officials have ordered the preventative evacuation of some communities around the Nevado del Ruiz volcano after it erupted, spewing smoke and ash. President Juan Manuel Santos on his Twitter account urged people living near the volcano in the west of the country to follow established contingency plans. Gas and vapor have been rising periodically since earlier this year from the Nevado de Ruiz, a 5,321m volcano located roughly 145km west of the country’s capital, Bogota. A 1985 eruption at the volcano brought a river of rocks and mud sweeping across the town of Armero, killing 25,000 people.
IRELAND
Woman guilty over U2 theft
A former personal assistant of U2 bassist Adam Clayton was found guilty on Friday of stealing 2.8 million euros (US$3.5 million) from the Irish musician’s bank accounts. Carol Hawkins, 48, was convicted of 181 counts of stealing checks from the 52-year-old between 2004 and 2008, Irish media reported. She transferred the cash to her own bank accounts from two of Clayton’s accounts on which she was a signatory. She used the money to finance a lavish lifestyle, including 22 horses, exotic holidays and a designer wardrobe, the Irish Examiner reported. Hawkins was living rent-free at Clayton’s home at the time and earning a salary that eventually rose to 48,000 euros a year. The jury delivered unanimous guilty verdicts against Hawkins on all counts, the Examiner said.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
YELLOW SHIRTS: Many protesters were associated with pro-royalist groups that had previously supported the ouster of Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, in 2006 Protesters rallied on Saturday in the Thai capital to demand the resignation of court-suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and in support of the armed forces following a violent border dispute with Cambodia that killed more than three dozen people and displaced more than 260,000. Gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument despite soaring temperatures, many sang patriotic songs and listened to speeches denouncing Paetongtarn and her father, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and voiced their backing of the country’s army, which has always retained substantial power in the Southeast Asian country. Police said there were about 2,000 protesters by mid-afternoon, although
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