PHILIPPINES
Radio host gunned down
Gunmen shot dead a radio broadcaster on Mindanao in the second such murder in a week, police said yesterday. The killing of Michael Diaz Milo, host of a daily radio show and a program director of DXFM radio, further worsened the nations’s standing as one of the most dangerous places for journalists. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists ranks the Philippines as the third-worst in its “impunity index” of countries that fail to fight violence against the press. Milo, 34, was riding his motorcycle late on Friday in the coastal city of Tandag when men following him, also on a motorbike, shot him in the head, a police report said.
NEPAL
S Korean paraglider dies
A South Korean paraglider plunged to his death in Pokhara on Saturday after his emergency parachute failed to open, local officials said yesterday. An aviation official said the 41-year-old, who has not been named, was an experienced paraglider who had made previous trips to Pokhara. “He died yesterday while paragliding solo, when his emergency parachute failed and sent him hurling to the ground,” said Pratap Babu Tiwari, head of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal in Pokhara.
PHILIPPINES
Police barred from ‘selfies’
Policemen taking part in relief operations after Typhoon Haiyan have been banned from posting “selfies” taken in the disaster zone, a police official said yesterday. “I think that’s [selfies] being insensitive. People there are suffering from the effects of the typhoon, losing home and loved ones, yet here they are posing for pictures as if it is something enjoyable,” police community relations head Lina Sarmiento said.
JAPAN
Academics condemn new law
A controversial new state secrets law passed on Friday was condemned on Saturday as “the largest ever threat to democracy in postwar Japan” by a group of academics, Kyodo news agency said. A group of 31 academics, including Nobel Prize winners Toshihide Maskawa and Hideki Shirakawa, accused the government of threatening “the fundamental human rights and pacifist principles” established by the country’s constitution. The statement condemned the coalition led by the Liberal Democratic Party of behaving in a way that was “reminiscent of the prewar government that wrested away freedom of thought and freedom of the press” by pushing the law through both legislative chambers. The law allows government ministers to designate as a state secret information related to defense, diplomacy, counterintelligence and counterterrorism.
SUDAN
New officials named
The ruling party yesterday named as senior vice president a man once dubbed a “sinister” defender of the Islamist revolution that brought President Omar al-Bashir to power. Former interior and defense minister Bakri Hassan Saleh was named first vice president and Hassabo Mohammed Abdel Rahman as second vice president, senior party official Rabbie Abdelatti Ebaid said. Saleh was presidential affairs minister in the Cabinet that Bashir dismissed last week after the most serious split in years within his ruling National Congress Party (NCP). Abdel Rahman had been the NCP’s political secretary. Ebaid said final composition of the new Cabinet would be declared within 24 hours.
UNITED KINGDOM
South Pole race redefined
Organizers of an Antarctic charity race involving Prince Harry said on Saturday they are suspending its competitive element because of harsh conditions, but plan to continue the journey to the South Pole. Harry, 29, is a member of one of three teams involving injured soldiers that set off last week on the 320km Walking with the Wounded South Pole Challenge. Expedition director Ed Parker said the teams were experiencing “a higher degree of stress” than expected and will no longer race one another, but travel and camp together. He said the teams would now be driven for part of the route and then finish the final 112km to the pole on foot, likely within a week.
ISRAEL
Minister moots annexation
Minister of the Economy Naftali Bennett said yesterday that the nation should annex parts of the West Bank under its full military control where most Jewish settlers live. “I favor implementation of Israeli sovereignty over the zone where 400,000 [settlers] live and only 70,000 Arabs,” the head of the Jewish Home religious party in the ruling coalition said. Bennett also ridiculed the US-brokered peace talks between Israel and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose writ covers the West Bank, but not Gaza, which is ruled by the Islamist movement Hamas. “This is all a joke. It’s as if we’re discussing the purchase of a car with only half of its owners,” he told public radio.
UNITED STATES
Veteran returns home
An 85-year-old US veteran detained in North Korea for several weeks returned home on Saturday to applause from supporters and the embrace of his family. Merrill Newman emerged into the international terminal at San Francisco’s airport smiling, accompanied by his son and holding the hand of his wife amid applause from supporters. He spoke briefly to the assembled media, declining to answer any questions or discuss his ordeal. “I’m delighted to be home,” he said. “It’s been a great homecoming. I’m tired, but ready to be with my family.” He also thanked the Swedish embassy in Pyongyang and the US embassy in Beijing for helping to secure his release.
ITALY
Hill lit up for Christmas
A picturesque medieval town on Saturday turned on a giant light installation known as the “World’s Biggest Christmas Tree.” Hundreds of onlookers watched as a priest used a tablet computer to switch on the display on a hill above the town of Gubbio in the Umbria region. The “tree” is made up of about 1,000 multicolored lights arranged across a hillside above Gubbio and stretches to a height of 750m and a maximum width of 450m. The shooting star at the top of the hill is made up of 250 lights and covers an area of more than 1,000m2.
NIGERIA
Farmers turning to drugs
Most farmers have abandoned growing food in favor of cannabis in a bid to become instant millionaires, the country’s anti-narcotics agency said on Saturday. In a statement, National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) chairman Ahmadu Giade said: “It is sad and disturbing that most farmers are now abandoning food and economic crops for cannabis.” Last year, the NDLEA arrested 8,052 suspected drug traffickers, including 542 women, it said. Giade said that more than 1,400 hectares of land was used last year for cannabis plantation. “This 1,404.27 hectares of land could have changed the fortunes of our agricultural sector,” he said.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
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