AFGHANISTAN
Traffic accident kills 51
A bus and truck collided and burst into flames yesterday, killing at least 51 people. The collision occurred in Ghazni Province on a highway that links Kabul with Kandahar. At least 51 of the 56 passengers on the bus were killed, said General Zarawar Zahid, the provincial police chief. “It is very sad,” he said. “When you see the bodies, some of them are not recognizable.” Zahid said the cause of the crash has not yet been determined, but he ruled out the possibility of an attack.
JAPAN
Robot being built for exams
Researchers are working on a robot they hope will be smart enough to ace entrance exams at the nation’s top university, which test everything from maths to foreign languages. “It has to analyze the exam questions and convert formulations and equations to a form that it can process before solving it through computer algebra,” said Hidenao Iwane from Fujitsu Laboratories, the Japanese information-technology giant’s research unit. Fujitsu and Japan’s National Institute of Informatics said the target is to have their robot score high marks on the exam for Tokyo University by 2021. Before then, they’re hoping the robot can sail through national entrance exams.
SOUTH KOREA
Lee confidant sentenced
One of president Lee Myung-bak’s most trusted confidants was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail yesterday after being convicted on corruption charges. The Seoul Central District Court also ordered Choi See-joong, former head of the state-run Korea Communications Commission, to pay 600 million won (more than US$535,000) in fines. The 75-year-old was found guilty of accepting 600 million won in bribes from a construction company in return for influence peddling. In court, Choi admitted to receiving the money, but denied he had exerted any influence. He was acquitted on charges of receiving a separate 200 million won bribe.
NEW ZEALAND
Lucky ticket found in trash
A man threw away a winning lottery ticket worth NZ$27 million (US$22.5 million) after reading the wrong results and thinking it was useless. It was not until the following day, when he heard the prize had not been claimed, that he searched for the ticket and found he had won. The man, in his 20s, had bought the ticket on a whim, spending money he had set aside for a haircut after he went to his hairdresser and found the shop closed. “I originally checked the results on my phone, but I must have got the wrong draw so I thought my ticket was a loser. I chucked it aside and thought ‘that was that’ and went to work,” he told Fairfax News yesterday. “It was only when there was so much talk in the town about the unclaimed prize that I thought it might pay to recheck the ticket.”
CZECH REPUBLIC
Alcohol poisoning rises
Police said on Thursday they had found a cache of bootleg spirits as the death toll from methanol poisoning rose to 18 in what experts called the worst wave of alcohol poisonings in three decades. About 500 bottles of “suspect unstamped alcohol” were found in a garage in the city of Zlin, 300km southeast of Prague, local police spokesman Petr Jaros told reporters. Police found the cache after they detained a distributor on Wednesday who “had mixed bootleg spirits in the garage, probably without knowing it was so dangerous,” local police chief Bedrich Koutny told the DNES daily. The death toll from the week-old wave of methanol poisoning cases rose to 18, media reports said. More than 20 people were in hospitals, some of them now blind and some in artificial comas. Health Minister Leos Heger warned he expected further casualties. On Wednesday, the government banned spirits sales at stands and mobile shops and threatened to impose blanket prohibition if the situation worsens. The country has the world’s second-highest adult alcohol intake, according to WHO data.
? MEXICO
Teenage hitman investigated
Prosecutors on Thursday said they were investigating a 16-year-old suspected hitman who was believed to have participated in at least 50 murders while working for a drug gang. A spokesman for prosecutors in the northeastern state of Sinaloa said the teenager, identified as Francisco Miguel N., was part of a gang known as Los Mazatlecos, a criminal group attached to the Beltran Leyva drugs cartel. Police arrested the teen for carrying a loaded gun and drugs. He later confessed to working as a hitman for the group, local prosecutors said in a statement. The teenager said he had taken part in executions of police, farmers since February. The boy said he was given an AK-47 rifle and a pistol to carry out the various attacks in Sinaloa.
UNITED STATES
Hackers hit back at FBI
The hacker group known as Anonymous on Thursday publicized credit card numbers in retaliation for what it claimed was an FBI raid to arrest one of its members. The group said Barrett Brown was arrested in an FBI raid while participating in an online chat Wednesday. In retaliation, the group posted “these 13 credit cards details as teaser,” saying they were “potentially belonging” to government officials. A Twitter posting said an offshoot of the group called Antisec “retaliates on Barrett Brown arrestation.” According to a report on the Web site The Hacker News, Brown came to notoriety when he threatened to release the names of 75 collaborators of the Mexican Zetas cartel for kidnapping an Anonymous member. The report also said he founded Project PM, which collects information about the intelligence industry and what it claims are threats to privacy and democratic institutions
BOSNIA-herzegovina
Porn serves political purpose
A mayoral candidate in the country’s fourth-largest city, Zenica, is using one of the Internet’s greatest lures, pornography, for his campaign. Mirad Hadziahmetovic is an independent candidate with a relatively slim chance of winning next month’s election and so has uploaded pornographic clips to his official campaign Web site to help his bid. To view the material, visitors must answer questions, such as “What is more important for Zenica, job creation or increasing the municipal budget through taxes?” At the end of each clip there is a separately recorded video of Hadziahmetovic saying: “If you liked this clip, vote for me.”
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
RSS