INDONESIA
Frenchman given parole
A Frenchman was freed on parole from a prison in Jakarta yesterday more than 14 years after he was caught smuggling drugs into Bali, his mother said. Michael Blanc, 40, was arrested the day after Christmas in 1999 at Denpasar Airport in Bali with 3.8kg of hash hidden in diving canisters. “He has come out of prison. He has signed his release papers,” his mother, Helene Le Touzey, said. It is rare for authorities to grant a foreign prisoner parole.
MEXICO
‘Cartel leader’ detained
A government official says federal forces have detained three members of the Knights Templar drug cartel, including one he describes as a leader who was behind a lot of the bloodshed in Michoacan State. National Public Safety System Executive Secretary Monte Rubido on Sunday said that Jesus Vazquez Macias, 37, was detained along with two other men as part of the strategy to bring security back to Michoacan. However, a vigilante group spokesman says Vazquez Macias was not a cartel leader, but a top hit man. Spokesman Estanislao Beltran says the self-defense groups will applaud the government’s work only after the cartel’s top four leaders are arrested.
GUYANA
Small plane crashes
A Canadian pilot was among two people feared dead on Saturday when the small plane he was flying went down in thick Amazon jungle two minutes after takeoff, authorities said. Civil Aviation Authority Director Zulfikar Mohammed said an all-day search failed to locate the single-engine Cessna Caravan aircraft. Trans Guyana Aviation spokesman Kit Nascimento said the plane was being piloted by Canadian Blake Slater. Also aboard was Dwayne Newton of Guyana. Special forces troops and the air corps have joined several privately owned aircraft to search for the missing plane.
NORWAY
Fire destroys historic village
A large blaze on Sunday raged through a historic village in the west, destroying many of its famed 18th and 19th-century wooden houses and forcing the evacuation of residents, police said. The fire in the riverside village of Laerdalsoyri, about 200km northwest of Oslo, began in a house on Saturday evening. The blaze raged out of control overnight and it took firefighters until Sunday afternoon to extinguish it. Laerdalsoyri is located in the West Norwegian Fjords area, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Police said 23 buildings, including 16 homes, were destroyed, and hundreds of residents had to be evacuated. Local media said several buildings listed as historic monuments were affected. In all, 177 people were admitted to hospitals for observation or treatment for smoke inhalation.
ITALY
Conductor Abbado dies
Claudio Abbado, a star in the great generation of Italian conductors who was revered by musicians in the world’s leading orchestras for developing a strong rapport with them while still allowing them their independence, has died. He was 80. Raffaela Grimaudo, spokeswoman for the Bologna mayor’s office, said Abbado died yesterday morning. Abbado made his debut in 1960 at La Scala in his home city of Milan and went on to be its musical director for nearly 20 years. He served as musical director of the Vienna State Opera, the Berlin Philharmonic and the London Symphony Orchestra and chief guest conductor of the Chicago Philharmonic. He also founded his own all-star orchestra in Lucerne, Switzerland.
REBUILDING: A researcher said that it might seem counterintuitive to start talking about reconstruction amid the war with Russia, but it is ‘actually an urgent priority’ Italy is hosting the fourth annual conference on rebuilding Ukraine even as Russia escalates its war, inviting political and business leaders to Rome to promote public-private partnerships on defense, mining, energy and other projects as uncertainty grows about the US’ commitment to Kyiv’s defense. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy were opening the meeting yesterday, which gets under way as Russia accelerated its aerial and ground attacks against Ukraine with another night of pounding missile and drone attacks on Kyiv. Italian organizers said that 100 official delegations were attending, as were 40 international organizations and development banks. There are
The tale of a middle-aged Chinese man, or “uncle,” who disguised himself as a woman to secretly film and share videos of his hookups with more than 1,000 men shook China’s social media, spurring fears for public health, privacy and marital fidelity. The hashtag “red uncle” was the top trending item on China’s popular microblog Sina Weibo yesterday, drawing at least 200 million views as users expressed incredulity and shock. The online posts told of how the man in the eastern city of Nanjing had lured 1,691 heterosexual men into sexual encounters at his home that he then recorded and distributed online. The
TARIFF ACTION: The US embassy said that the ‘political persecution’ against former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro disrespects the democratic traditions of the nation The US and Brazil on Wednesday escalated their row over US President Donald Trump’s support for former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, with Washington slapping a 50 percent tariff on one of its main steel suppliers. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva threatened to reciprocate. Trump has criticized the prosecution of Bolsonaro, who is on trial for allegedly plotting to cling on to power after losing 2022 elections to Lula. Brasilia on Wednesday summoned Washington’s top envoy to the country to explain an embassy statement describing Bolsonaro as a victim of “political persecution” — echoing Trump’s description of the treatment of Bolsonaro as
CEREMONY EXPECTED: Abdullah Ocalan said he believes in the power of politics and social peace, not weapons, and called on the group to put that into practice The jailed leader of a Kurdish militant group yesterday renewed a call for his fighters to lay down their arms, days before a symbolic disarmament ceremony is expected to take place as a first concrete step in a peace process with the Turkish state. In a seven-minute video message broadcast on pro-Kurdish Medya Haber’s YouTube channel, Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), said that the peace initiative had reached a stage that required practical steps. “It should be considered natural for you to publicly ensure the disarmament of the relevant groups in a way that addresses the expectations
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