CHINA
Train goes off rails, 15 hurt
A total of 15 people were hospitalized after a train derailed in Heilongjiang Province’s capital, Harbin, early yesterday, officials said. The Harbin Railway Bureau said on its microblog that the cause of the pre-dawn accident was under investigation. It said bureau officials responded to the accident with police and fire and rescue services. The bureau said the train that derailed was an older model, not one of the high-speed trains recently brought into service in the nation’s railway network, on which accidents rarely occur, despite its being one of the world’s most extensive systems.
JAPAN
Bird flu sparks mass culling
The government has ordered the slaughter of about 112,000 chickens after officials yesterday confirmed bird flu infections at a poultry farm in Kumamoto Prefecture. DNA tests showed that the H5 strain of the virus is present at the farm, which houses 56,000 birds, after its owner on Saturday reported a lot of sudden deaths among his poultry, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said in a statement. Officials also ordered the culling of 56,000 birds at a separate farm run by the same owner after deeming it a location of possible infections, the ministry said. It was the first confirmed outbreak of bird flu in the nation in three years and the ministry has been warning farmers about infection risks, citing the continued spread of the disease in Asia, including in South Korea. Authorities on Saturday banned the movement of chickens from the two affected farms, as well as other farms in their vicinities. Authorities were sanitizing areas around the two farms, testing birds in nearby facilities and setting up areas to disinfect vehicles traveling on major roads around the area.
PAKISTAN
Abducted tribesmen freed
A government official says militants have released more than 90 tribesmen they abducted from a tribal festival in the northwest, but still hold seven influential men. Arshad Khan yesterday said that tribal elders negotiated the release after the gunmen seized about 100 tribesmen on the border of Orakzai and Khyber tribal regions on Saturday. Paramilitary troops had begun a search operation soon after the abductions. A tribal elder said the militants have not demanded anything for the release of the seven men, who are from the Qamberkhel tribe.
SAUDI ARABIA
MERS kills one, infects eight
A foreigner has died from Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), while eight people, including five health workers, have been infected in Jeddah, where the spread of the coronavirus among medics has sparked panic. The death of the 45-year-old man, whose nationality has not been disclosed, brings the nationwide toll in the world’s most MERS-affected country to 68. The Ministry of Health announced the death late on Saturday, adding that two female and three male health workers, had been infected along with three other people. The announcement came after panic over the spread of the virus among medical staff led to the closure of the emergency room at the city’s main public hospital. The total number of national MERS cases has hit 189, the ministry said. The virus was initially concentrated in the east, but has spread. The WHO on Friday said it had been told of 212 laboratory-confirmed cases of MERS worldwide, of which 88 have proved fatal. The virus is considered a deadlier, but less transmissible cousin of the SARS virus that erupted in Asia in 2003. Experts are still struggling to understand MERS, for which there is no known vaccine.
ITALY
Protest turns violent
An anti-austerity protest on Saturday turned violent when demonstrators threw bottles, eggs and firecrackers at police. At least one demonstrator was injured. A photographer saw one demonstrator with a bloody hand, which appeared to have been injured by a firecracker. Police brought the crowd under control using tear gas, and were rounding up demonstrators suspected of violence. The protest march was organized against high housing costs and joblessness as a result of the nation’s long economic slowdown. The procession made its way peacefully through central Rome until a more violent element wearing helmets started throwing objects at police near the Ministry of Labor.
ITALY
Ex-senator arrested
An ex-senator friend of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was arrested on Saturday in Lebanon where he was on the run over charges of Mafia ties, the Ministry of the Interior announced. The news came the day after the anti-Mafia prosecutor’s office said a warrant for Marcello Dell’Utri had been issued on Tuesday, but that he was “unreachable.” Dell’Utri himself had issued a statement in which he did not reveal where he was, but said that he had “no intention” of escaping arrest and was undergoing medical checks because of poor health. His disappearance had caused outrage in the political world, with far-leftist and former prosecutor Ignazio Ingroia saying that “allowing Dell’Utri to flee abroad was shameful and indecent for a civilised country.”
NETHERLANDS
Bishop’s abuse admitted
A Catholic diocese has acknowledged that a former bishop, who died last year, was guilty of sexual abuse decades ago when he was a chaplain and teacher. An organization of victims of church abuse, Mea Culpa, welcomed the statement on Saturday as vindicating a fight for justice by victims, both boys at the time of the abuse. The Diocese of Roermond said in a statement issued on Friday that a church complaints commission had ruled that former bishop Jo Gijsen was found to have committed the abuse. Current Roermond Bishop Frans Wiertz said he “accepted the advice of the complaints commission to declare the allegations well-founded.” Bert Smeets of Mea Culpa called the ruling “a slap in the face for the Dutch Roman Catholic Church.”
NEW ZEALAND
Royal baby watch started
Royal watchers were scrutinizing the Duchess of Cambridge yesterday, after her husband, British Prince William, appeared to hint a second baby is on the way. The royals’ eight-month-old son, Prince George, third in line to the British throne, has been the star of their tour so far. However, William suggested during a walkabout in the North Island town of Cambridge there may soon be another royal baby to share the spotlight. During a meeting with Cynthia Read, who knitted the merino wool shawl which was the nation’s official gift when George was born, William said according to several reports: “You might have to make another one soon.” Read, who emigrated from England eight years ago, was convinced the prince was serious. The duke and duchess of Cambridge flew to the southern city of Dunedin yesterday where they attended a Palm Sunday service at St Paul’s Anglican Cathedral and attended a junior rugby match.
VENEZUELA
Reporters beaten, arrested
A total of 181 journalists have been the target of attacks, thefts or arbitrary detentions in the country since the start of anti-government protests two months ago, a reporters’ union said on Saturday. The Union of Press Workers said 60 percent of the attacks were carried out by security forces, with just a quarter done by demonstrators on either side. Since nearly daily protests began in early February, the union has tallied 82 cases of harassment, 40 physical attacks and 35 thefts or destruction of cameras and other materials by the police or demonstrators. It has also counted 23 arbitrary arrests of reporters, it said. The protests are denouncing rampant street crime, soaring inflation, poor job prospects and shortages of such essential goods as milk and toilet paper. They have left 41 dead and more than 650 wounded.
UNITED STATES
Actress Phyllis Frelich dies
Phyllis Frelich, a Tony Award-winning deaf actress who starred in the Broadway version of Children of a Lesser God, has died. She was 70. Her husband, Robert Steinberg, said Frelich died on Thursday at her Southern California home. She suffered from a degenerative neurological condition. The oldest of nine deaf children born to deaf parents, Frelich became interested in acting while at the North Dakota School for the Deaf and Gallaudet College in Washington. She joined the National Theatre of the Deaf, where she met Steinberg, who worked as a scenic and lighting designer on several plays by Mark Medoff. The couple inspired Medoff to create Children of a Lesser God, which follows the relationship between a deaf woman and a teacher at a school for the deaf.
COLOMBIA
Seven ‘gangsters’ killed
Seven alleged members of the drug trafficking gang “Los Urabenos” died in a clash with the army in the northeast, the army said on Saturday. “These guys kept ravaging the towns of Bajo Cauca” in Antioquia department, where the clashes took place, the statement said, adding “they didn’t allow the normal economic development of the region.” Los Urabenos appeared after the demobilization of right-wing paramilitary groups between 2003 and 2006 in a process promoted under former president Alvaro Uribe. The gang is considered one of the country’s most dangerous drug trafficking gangs, and has an estimated 2,366 members, according to an official report from a year ago.
COLOMBIA
Army seizes marijuana cache
The army seized 1.3 tonnes of marijuana worth nearly US$1 million, allegedly owned by Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas, it said on Saturday. Most of the haul was seized in northern Cauca, where “soldiers seized 1,239kg of marijuana,” a statement from the army’s third brigade said. A further 100kg of marijuana was seized in the neighboring department of Valle del Cauca, “from a person who was transporting it to Cali” the capital of the department, the statement added.
SYRIA
Aleppo battles kill 29
Shelling and firefights between government forces and rebels in Aleppo killed at least 29 people, activists said yesterday. The fighting occurred a day after both sides in the civil war claimed a village near Damascus fell victim to a poison gas attack. The Britain-based Observatory for Human Rights said that at least 16 rebels were among those who died in the overnight combat. At least 13 civilians were also killed when government aircraft dropped bombs on the city.
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
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