SINGAPORE
Two dozen charged over riot
Prosecutors will charge 24 Indian workers for taking part in the city-state’s first riot in more than 40 years, police said yesterday. The men face jail terms of up to 10 years plus caning for the hour-long fracas on Sunday night, triggered when an Indian construction worker was struck and killed by a private bus in a district known as Little India. The 55-year-old bus driver who killed Sakthivel Kumaravelu, 33, has been released on bail after being arrested on charges of causing death by a negligent act.
AFGHANISTAN
Woman saved from stoning
Police in a remote northern village rescued a woman from being stoned to death after she was condemned by the Taliban for allegedly cheating on her husband, officials said yesterday. The militants handed down the death penalty after the woman’s husband, a Taliban follower, accused her of having an affair. A Kunduz police spokesman said the rescue operation was launched after the woman’s relatives notified the police.
UNITED KINGDOM
Latin dictionary finished
A monumental dictionary of medieval British Latin has been completed after a century of research and drafting, in a project that spanned the careers of three editors and a small army of contributors. The 17th, and final, part of The Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources is published this week, drawing on more than 1,400 sources from the 6th to the 16th century. Medieval British Latin was particularly distinctive because it was affected by the diversity of native spoken languages, including English, French, Irish, Norse and Welsh. “It’s a difficult question to know how many people are going to use it. Fewer and fewer people know any Latin, but this means that more people will need a dictionary to know how to read it,” said Richard Ashdowne, current editor of the dictionary, who took over in 2011 from David Howlett when he retired after 31 years on the project.
TURKEY
Police probe art thefts
Police are investigating the theft of paintings and artifacts worth about US$30 million, media reported on Monday. They are hunting for about 40 paintings stolen from the State Museum of Art and Sculpture in Ankara after recovering another 30 major artworks in a raid in Istanbul last week. Radikal newspaper said that according to a 2010 inventory at the museum, more than 300 pieces had been stolen, including several dozen that had been replaced by fakes.
UNITED STATES
Roaches can handle winter
A species of cockroach native to Asia that has been seen crawling around the High Line, an elevated, outdoor park in lower Manhattan, can survive the city’s often brutal winters, according to a new study. Researchers at Rutgers University have identified the pest as Periplaneta japonica, which is native to Japan. How the bugs got to New York was unclear, but researchers speculated they were in the soil of one of the plants in the park. Researchers said the new roach cannot breed a hybrid super-roach by mating with the more common local variety due to mismatching genitalia.
UNITED STATES
Ex-mayor sentenced
Former San Diego mayor Bob Filner was sentenced on Monday to three months of home confinement and three years of probation for harassing women. He pleaded guilty in October to one felony and two misdemeanors.
BACKING THE APPLICATION: Ankara’s move is expected to enable Helsinki to join the alliance, while the Turkish president is still opposed to backing Sweden’s application Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday ended months of diplomatically charged delays and asked the Turkish parliament to back Finland’s bid to join NATO. A simultaneous decision by fellow holdout Hungary to schedule a Finnish ratification vote for March 27 means the US-led defense alliance would likely grow to 31 nations within a few months. NATO’s expansion into a country with a 1,340km border with Russia would double the length of the bloc’s frontier with its Cold War-era foe. Finland had initially aimed to join together with fellow NATO aspirant Sweden, which is facing a litany of disputes with Turkey that
The US and the Philippines plan to announce new sites as soon as possible for an expanded Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), which gives the Western power access to military bases in the Southeast Asian country. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr last month granted the US access to four military bases, on top of five existing locations under the 2014 EDCA, amid China’s increasing assertiveness regarding the South China Sea and Taiwan. Speaking at the Basa Air Base in Manila, one of the existing EDCA sites, US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said the defense agreements between the two countries
‘DUAL PURPOSE’: Upgrading the port is essential for the Solomon Islands’ economy and might not be military focused, but ‘it is not about bases, it is about access,’ an analyst said The Solomon Islands has awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to a Chinese state company to upgrade an international port in Honiara in a project funded by the Asian Development Bank, a Solomon Islands official said yesterday. China Civil Engineering Construction Co (CCECC) was the only company to submit a bid in the competitive tender, Solomon Islands Ministry of Infrastructure Development official Mike Qaqara said. “This will be upgrading the old international port in Honiara and two domestic wharves in the provinces,” Qaqara said. Responding to concerns that the port could be deepened for Chinese naval access, he said there would be “no expansion.” The Solomon
Seven stories above a shop floor hawking cheap perfume and nylon underwear, Thailand’s “shopping mall gorilla” sits alone in a cage — her home for 30 years despite a reignited row over her captivity. Activists around the world have long campaigned for the primate to be moved from Pata Zoo, on top of a Bangkok mall, with singer Cher and actor Gillian Anderson adding their voices in 2020. However, the family who owns Bua Noi — whose name translates as “little lotus” — have resisted public and government pressure to relinquish the critically endangered animal. The gorilla has lived at Pata for more
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