UNITED STATES
Quake triggers mini-tsunami
A magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck deep under the ocean floor near Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, triggering shaking felt over vast distances and setting off a small tsunami, the National Tsunami Warning Center said. A tsunami warning prompted the evacuation of about 200 residents in Adak to higher ground, city manager Layton Lockett said. The warning was later downgraded to an advisory. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage from the quake, which was initially measured at a magnitude of 8, but later revised down. The quake was so large and deep that it triggered dozens of aftershocks in an hour and prompted enough shaking to be picked up by seismometers around the world over the next 24 hours, Alaska Earthquake Center director Mike West said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Girl mutilation ‘un-Islamic’
The Muslim Council of Britain has condemned female genital mutilation (FGM) as “un-Islamic” and told its members that FGM risks bringing the religion into disrepute. The influential council has for the first time issued explicit guidance on the controversial practice, which criticizes it and says it is “no longer linked to the teaching of Islam.” It added that one of the “basic principles” of Islam was that believers should not harm themselves or others. The organization is to send flyers to each of the 500 mosques that form its membership. They will also be distributed in community centers in a drive to eradicate a practice that affects 125 million women and girls worldwide.
SUDAN
Christian convert freed
A 27-year-old woman who was sentenced to death last month for converting to Christianity from Islam was freed on Monday after what the government said was “unprecedented” international pressure. Mariam Yahya Ibrahim, who is married to a Christian American, was ordered by a court last month to return to Islam and sentenced to 100 lashes and to death. Ibrahim was sent to a secret location for her protection, her lawyer said. Ibrahim gave birth in prison to a daughter, her second child by husband Daniel Wani, whom she married in 2011.
UNITED STATES
Mormons oust female leader
The Mormon church has excommunicated the founder of a prominent women’s group for “conduct contrary” to its laws and order, according to an e-mail cited on Monday by the woman involved. Kate Kelly, a founder of Ordain Women, said in a blog that she had been informed of her ouster after an all-male panel held a disciplinary trial over her case on Sunday. Kelly said the panel convicted her of the charge of apostasy and has decided to excommunicate her, the most serious punishment that can be levied by a ecclesiastical court. “The decision to force me outside my congregation and community is exceptionally painful,” Kelly said.
MEXICO
Skulls found in teddy bears
Inspectors found two skulls and other human remains hidden inside teddy bears at a Mexico City airport shipping company. Employees made the find when they ran the plush bears through an X-ray machine during a routine inspection, the Mexico City Public Prosecutor’s Office said on Sunday. The human remains “appear to have been recently exhumed,” the office said. Authorities arrested the man mailing the package, who said he bought the skulls at a market. The man said the skulls “are in demand abroad by people who practice Santeria,” an Afro-Caribbean syncretic religion.
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
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
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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