HONG KONG
Cocaine found in underwear
Authorities said yesterday they had arrested a suspected drugs smuggler at the airport with cocaine stuffed in his specially adapted underpants. The 63-year-old, who was not identified, was arrested after arriving from Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Tuesday, the Customs and Excise Department said in a statement. He was found to be carrying nearly 2kg of the drugs in his “specially made underpants and a pair of shoes,” it added. The haul was worth an estimated HK$2.2 million (US$284,000), according to the department, adding that the man would appear in court today to face drugs-trafficking charges. He faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment and a fine of HK$5 million if convicted.
UNITED STATES
Twitter account teaches twits
A six-week-old Twitter account is making apparent progress in its mission to get people to stop tweeting pictures of their bank cards, often with full numbers visible. It is unclear who set up @NeedADebitCard, but several of the Instagram and Twitpic images of debit cards that it has found and retweeted on the microblogging Web site have been pulled down. “Please quit posting pictures of your debit cards, people,” it nevertheless implored alongside an avatar of a blank generic card. However, on its Consumerist.com blog, the Consumers’ Union advocacy group said on Tuesday there was little a criminal could do with a debit card without the three-digit CVV code imprinted on the back as an extra security measure.
AFGHANISTAN
Ally shoots NATO troops
A man in an Afghan army uniform shot and wounded a number of coalition troops in an eastern province, the US-led NATO coalition said yesterday. In a statement, it said that the service members were being treated at a medical facility. It did not say how many were wounded or provide any other details about the attack — which occurred on Tuesday in Wardak Province’s Sayed Abad district. The coalition maintains a large base there, but NATO did not say where in the district the attack took place.
AUSTRALIA
Crews search for boat
Rescue crews were hunting for a boat in distress and crowded with asylum seekers off the coast of Indonesia yesterday, one day after the leaders of Canberra and Jakarta agreed to strengthen maritime ties as part of a bid to combat people smuggling. The boat issued a distress call early yesterday morning, and was believed to have up to 180 people on board, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said. The navy ship HMAS Wollongong was searching where the boat was believed to be — about 110km south of Indonesia — but had not located it as of late morning, Defense Minister Stephen Smith said.
CHINA
Raul Castro visits Beijing
Cuban President Raul Castro is visiting Beijing for talks with President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and other leaders in Beijing. Castro arrived yesterday to begin a four-day visit. Cuban state media said he was accompanied by Cuban Vice President Ricardo Cabrisas Ruiz and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez. Neither side has said what issues are to be discussed. Castro visited Vietnam and China while defense minister, a post he occupied from 1959 until he replaced his elder brother Fidel as president in 2008. During a 1997 trip to Beijing, he spoke approvingly of the Asian giant’s mixture of socialism and market liberalizations.
UNITED STATES
Online speech under threat
Free speech advocates have warned that online communications are being stifled by the growing efforts of authorities to obtain records of messages posted by users on forums such as Twitter. The warning comes in a week in which a judge in New York ruled that Twitter must release three months’ worth of an Occupy Wall Street protester’s online communications. Martin Stolar, a lawyer for Malcolm Harris, one of 732 Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge roadway in New York in October last year, said: “It sort of puts a damper on communication and people’s ability to freely communicate if they know the government is going to be intercepting.” Prosecutors have pursued Twitter for details of Harris’s tweets in an attempt to find out whether he disobeyed police orders. Protesters argue that police did not give clear directions during the march, last month a federal judge ruled that police had failed to give sufficient warnings against walking on the roadway. Harris still faces a disorderly conduct charge.
UNITED STATES
Andy Griffith dies
Actor Andy Griffith, whose portrayal of a small-town sheriff made The Andy Griffith Show one of the nation’s television’s most enduring shows, has died at his North Carolina home at age 86, the Dare County Sheriff said on Tuesday. Griffith created another memorable character, the folksy defense lawyer in Matlock in the 1980s and 1990s, but it was his portrayal of Sheriff Andy Taylor on the The Andy Griffith Show in the 1960s that gave him a place in television history. The show portrayed life in the friendly, slow-moving fictional town of Mayberry, North Carolina.
BOLIVIA
H1N1 flu infects hundreds
An epidemic of H1N1 flu has infected almost 900 people and claimed 11 lives, health officials said Tuesday. Although most of the cases occurred in the last few weeks, the outbreak does not rise to the level of a national epidemic, officials said. According to official tallies, 873 cases have been reported across the country, of which 606 are in the western department of La Paz. Authorities have not said whether the strain of the virus originated as swine or avian flu.
UNITED KINGDOM
Airmen missing after crash
Two airmen were missing and two others were hospitalized after Royal Air Force (RAF) Tornado jets crashed on Tuesday off Scotland’s coast, officials said. The Ministry of Defence said the search for the two missing airman would resume yesterday morning. It was not clear if the two aircraft crashed into each other. Two crewmembers were plucked from the sea by helicopter, and the ministry said some wreckage had been recovered. Group Captain Ian Gale, the station commander at RAF Lossiemouth, confirmed “with great regret” the crash of two of his station’s Tornado G4 aircraft.
UNITED STATES
Zetas brother held in Texas
The brother of two alleged leaders in the Zetas drug cartel has been ordered detained in Texas while he faces accusations that he was involved in a money laundering scheme centered on a US horse ranch. Jose Trevino Morales pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to a federal money laundering charge. The Austin American-Statesman reported that Trevino’s attorney, David Finn, argued that authorities were trying to harm Trevino because his brothers were allegedly involved in the Mexican cartel.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
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