SOUTH AFRICA
Police robbed, locked in van
Police yesterday admitted that two officers were robbed of their guns and locked in their own van in the middle of the day in an embarrassment that was all caught on camera. The theft occurred on Tuesday afternoon when the officers stopped for lunch at a roadside food stall in a Johannesburg township, a police spokesman said. The robbery was caught on the CCTV camera of a nearby business. The footage shows four men casually walking past the police van and disappearing from view beneath a tarpaulin where the officers were lunching. They re-emerge seconds later with the officers in tow, force them into the back of the vehicle, lock the van and then hurry off — The entire robbery took less than a minute. Police spokesman brigadier Neville Malila said members of the public helped the officers out of the car, after which police called for backup and a chase ensued. “The suspects lost control of their vehicle and fired several shots at the police who returned fire,” Malila said. Three suspects were arrested.
THAILAND
Student jailed for royal snub
A court sentenced a university student to 2.5 years in prison on Tuesday for posting a message on Facebook it said insulted King Bhumibol Adulyadej. A Criminal Court judge found 24-year-old Akkaradet Eiamsuwan guilty of violating the lese majeste law, which punishes people who defame, insult or threaten the monarchy. The ruling said Akkaradet used an alias to post the message on Facebook in March. He was arrested in Bangkok in June and has been in jail since then. The court said it reduced the original sentence of five years’ imprisonment because the defendant had confessed to the offense. The nation’s lese majeste law is the world’s harshest, carrying jail terms of three to 15 years.
ZAMBIA
Scott U-turns after riots
Interim president Guy Scott reversed his dismissal of defense minister and presidential front-runner Edgar Lungu as the ruling party’s secretary-general on Tuesday after the sacking triggered riots. Scott told state-owned ZNBC Radio he had rescinded his order, but did not say why. Scott became Africa’s first white leader in 20 years after the death last week of former president Michael Sata, but is constitutionally barred from running for president because his parents were born abroad, in Scotland. He also gave no reasons for removing Lungu as head of Sata’s Patriotic Front Party. The dismissal led to hundreds of Lungu supporters rampaging overnight in Lusaka, stoning motorists, burning tires and singing anti-Scott songs before being dispersed by police. “Can you believe it that, 50 years after independence, we have a white man as president?” party supporter Willy Phiri said on Monday. “He comes and starts to fire genuine members. Edgar is our member and Guy wants to take us back to colonialism. We won’t accept it, Guy has to go.”
MONGOLIA
Parliament ousts PM
The parliament yesterday voted to remove Prime Minister Norov Altankhuyag amid concerns about a serious economic downturn as gold, copper and coal prices and foreign direct investment slump. Out of 66 members of parliament who voted, 34 were in favor of ousting Altankhuyag, television showed. Ten members of parliament, including eight members of his coalition government, did not show up. It will now be up to the coalition government to select a new candidate, who will have to be approved by the president and confirmed by parliament.
FRANCE
Farmers dump manure
A group of more than 300 farmers dumped about 100 tonnes of manure and rotten vegetables in the center of Chartres on Tuesday in protest at falling food prices. Assisted by about 30 tractors, the farmers dumped the slurry and rotting food in front of the offices of the agriculture department and town hall. The protesters, from the FDSEA union, were “fed up” with the “increasingly crazy constraints and charges” faced by farmers, union leader Jean-Michel Gouache said. He denounced the “collapsing prices of cereals, milk and vegetables, caused in part by the sanctions on Russia,” as well as rising fertilizer prices. Russia imposed a ban on agricultural products from the EU earlier this year in response to European sanctions over the Ukraine crisis. The protest in Chartres, southwest of Paris, comes ahead of widespread farmer strikes due across the country yesterday.
UNITED STATES
Mom allegedly hired hit man
A New York woman is facing charges of trying to hire a hit man to kill her daughter’s ex-boyfriend and feed his body to alligators, according to police and jail officials. Police arrested Melisa Schonfield, 57, who lives in the upstate town of Brownville, on Friday on charges of second-degree conspiracy and second-degree criminal solicitation, said Dave Pustizzi, a detective in the Jefferson County sheriff’s office. Schonfield is suspected of meeting with an undercover detective posing as a hit man and conspiring to kill a Florida man, identified later as the 36-year-old ex-boyfriend of her daughter, Pustizzi said. Schonfield is accused of giving the detective US$5,500 in cash, half of the total amount for the killing, in a Walmart parking lot. When the detective asked how to dispose of the body, Schonfield allegedly suggested throwing it to alligators.
CANADA
Teen forced teens to sell sex
A teenage girl was jailed for six-and-a-half years on Tuesday for drugging and beating girls as young as 13 into prostitution in the capital, Ottawa, after luring them through social media. The 18-year-old ring leader was only 15 when she was arrested along with two other girls in 2012. Acting on their own without adult guidance, the girls used social media to lure victims to a suburban Ottawa home where they would be encouraged or forced to take drugs, and then delivered up to adult clients. The court heard that one of the accused would send photographs of a new recruit to prospective clients from her cellphone and if they agreed, she would send the girl by taxi to the man’s home to sell sex. Police broke up the prostitution ring in June 2012 after one of the victims complained to her mother, who informed authorities.
UNITED KINGDOM
Sex assaults halt training
The defense ministry said on Tuesday it was cutting short a training program for Libyan troops after reported sexual assaults allegedly involving five of the servicemen. About 300 members of the troubled north African country’s armed forces have been based at the Bassingbourn Barracks in Cambridgeshire, eastern England, since July. Three of the Libyan soldiers — Ibrahim El Maarfi, Mohammed Abdalsalam and Khaled El Azibi — were due in court in Cambridge on Tuesday. Maarfi and Abdalsalam have each admitted two counts of sexual assault. Azibi has been charged with three counts of sexual assault, but has yet to enter a plea, media reported. Two other servicemen, Moktar Ali Saad Mahmoud and Ibrahim Abogutila, have been charged with raping a man, the Cambridge News’ Web site reported.
School bullies in Singapore are to face caning under new guidelines, but the education minister on Tuesday said it would be meted out only as a last resort with strict safeguards. Human rights groups regularly criticize Singapore for the use of corporal punishment, which remains part of the school and criminal justice systems, but authorities have defended it as a deterrent to crime and serious misconduct. Caning was discussed in the parliament after legislators asked how it would be used in relation to bullying in schools. The debate followed stricter guidelines on serious student misconduct, including bullying, unveiled by the Singaporean Ministry of
As evening falls in Fiji’s capital, a steady stream of people approaches a makeshift clinic that is a first line of defense against one of the world’s fastest-growing HIV epidemics. In the South Pacific nation — a popular tourist destination of just under a million people — more than 2,000 new HIV cases were recorded last year, a 26 percent increase from 2024. The government has declared an HIV outbreak and described it as a national crisis. “It’s spreading like wildfire,” said Siteri Dinawai, 46, who came to be tested. The Moonlight Clinic, a converted minibus parked in a suburban cul-de-sac in Suva, is
Jailed media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai (黎智英) has been awarded Deutsche Welle’s (DW) freedom of speech award for his contribution to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. The German public broadcaster on Thursday said Lai would be presented in absentia with the 12th iteration of the award on June 23 at the DW Global Media Forum in Bonn. Deutsche Welle director-general Barbara Massing praised the 78-year-old founder of the now-shuttered news outlet Apple Daily for standing “unwaveringly for press freedom in Hong Kong at great personal risk.” “With Apple Daily, he gave journalists a platform for free reporting and a voice to the democracy movement in
A MESSAGE: Japan’s participation in the Balikatan drills is a clear deterrence signal to China not to attack Taiwan while the US is busy in the Middle East, an analyst said The Japan Self-Defense Forces yesterday fired a Type 88 anti-ship missile during a joint maritime exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces, hitting a decommissioned Philippine Navy ship in waters facing the disputed South China Sea, in drills that underscore Tokyo’s rising willingness to project military power on China’s doorstep. The drill took place as Manila and Tokyo began talks on a potential defense equipment transfer, made possible by Japan’s decision to scrap restrictions on military exports. The discussions include the possible early transfer of Abukuma-class destroyers and TC-90 aircraft to the Philippines, Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. Philippine Secretary of
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