PAKISTAN
Four polio cases reported
A health official says four new polio cases have been detected in the country, bringing the number of children affected by the crippling disease this year to 276. Rana Mohammad Safdar, a senior official at the National Institute of Health in Islamabad, yesterday said the new cases were registered this week. He said most of the cases came from the northwest, where local militants often target polio teams. Safdar said authorities would launch a new three-day vaccination campaign tomorrow to reach 35 million children across the country. Militants oppose the campaign, alleging that Western governments would use it to spy on insurgents after the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
UNITED STATES
Bono crashes, ‘in disguise’
How did U2 frontman Bono escape notice when he crashed his bicycle last month? If his bandmate is to be believed, it is because he was disguised as a Hasidic Jew. U2 guitarist The Edge was asked in a US radio interview why no pictures emerged when Bono — among the world’s most-recognizable singers — had a serious accident in New York’s Central Park. “When he’s going cycling, he likes to dress up as a Hasidic Jew, so I think that probably helped,” The Edge told KROQ in Los Angeles. The Edge sounded serious, but the radio hosts laughed and did not follow up to ask whether he was joking. Hasidic Jewish men, who are a common sight in New York, generally wear dark suits and brimmed hats and maintain facial hair. The Edge said that Bono was wearing a helmet. U2 on Wednesday announced a tour of North America and Europe starting in May next year. The Edge gave the interview to KROQ amid the tour announcement to reveal that U2 would not play the Los Angeles station’s annual “Almost Acoustic Christmas” charity concert next week due to Bono’s injuries.
KAZAKHSTAN
Hollande plans Ukraine talks
French President Francois Hollande vowed to work toward a “de-escalation” in the Ukraine crisis on Friday as he began a two-day trip to Kazakhstan. Hollande met Nursultan Nazarbayev, the strongman president of the energy-rich Central Asian nation and made the remarks at a joint press conference. The French president called for a “de-escalation” in Ukraine, which he said should first be “verbal” and then “military.” Nazarbayev, a 74-year-old who has ruled the Central Asian country bordering Russia since the breakup of the Soviet Union, meanwhile called for the West “to put an end to sanctions” on Moscow. The sanctions have also hit his country, since the economies of the two countries are closely linked, a Western diplomat said.
UNITED STATES
Cooker of neighbor gets life
A Daytona Beach, Florida, woman convicted of cooking her neighbor after strangling and dismembering him has been sentenced to life in prison. A Volusia County judge sentenced 42-year-old Angela Stoldt on Friday. She was convicted of first-degree murder. Authorities say Stoldt tried to cremate 36-year-old James Sheaffer’s body in April last year by putting several body parts in an oven and in pots on the stove. When that did not work, she put his body parts in bags and threw them in the trash. Authorities say Stoldt relied on Sheaffer for money, although their relationship was platonic, and that money was the motive for the murder. According to the Daytona Beach News-Journal, Stoldt said she killed Sheaffer in self-defense.
ARGENTINA
‘Boob raffle’ called off
An Argentine nightclub that advertised a raffle for free breast implants has fallen foul of the country’s authorities. The club, Hibrido, tried to organize a sorteo de lolas, translated in English as “boob raffle,” for next Saturday but called it off under pressure from the National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism.
UNITED STATES
FBI looks into Sony e-mails
The FBI is investigating threatening e-mails sent to employees of Sony Pictures, which was hit by a disruptive cyberattack last week. The FBI’s statement on Friday does not provide details. However, Variety magazine reported that a group that first hacked Sony on Monday last week is taking credit for an e-mail, written in broken English, which says employees must object to “the false of the company... If you don’t, not only you but your family will be in danger.” Cyberattacks have put unreleased movies and personal employee information online. There has been speculation that the attack was North Korean retaliation for Sony’s new movie — The Interview — about an attempt to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
UNITED STATES
Chinese man to stand trial
A Chinese man accused of smuggling “highly sensitive” parts for nuclear production to Iran was extradited to Boston on Friday where he is due to face federal charges. Cheng Sihai (程四海), charged alongside an Iranian man and two Iranian businesses, allegedly exported pressure sensors to Iran that could be used to manufacture nuclear weapons, a government statement said. Cheng was arrested in February by British authorities and extradited to the US. He is scheduled to appear in federal court next week. According to the government indictment, Cheng supplied thousands of parts manufactured in the US to the company Eyvaz, identified by the European Council as an entity implicated in Iranian nuclear or ballistic missile activity.
UNITED STATES
Four stabbed on train
Police took a suspect into custody in Michigan on Friday after four people were stabbed aboard an Amtrak passenger train in the town of Niles, Amtrak officials said. None of the victims was killed, a dispatcher for the Niles Police Department said. Authorities declined to provide any immediate details about the circumstances of the stabbing or the condition of the victims. Niles, a town of about 12,000 people, is about 16km north of South Bend, Indiana, near the southeastern shore of Lake Michigan. Amtrak said the incident took place on Train 364, the Blue Water line, which runs between Chicago and Port Huron, Michigan, while the train was at the station in Niles.
UNITED STATES
Snowden documentary wins
CitizenFour, Laura Poitras’s documentary about National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden, was given the top award for best feature by the International Documentary Association on Friday. The association’s award for CitizenFour follows the film’s best documentary win at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards this week. CitizenFour gives a fly-on-the-wall account of Snowden’s tense days in a Hong Kong hotel and encounters with journalists as newspapers published details of National Security Agency programs that gathered data from the Internet activities and phone records of millions of US citizens and dozens of world leaders.
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
‘FIGHT TO THE END’: Attacking a court is ‘unprecedented’ in South Korea and those involved would likely face jail time, a South Korean political pundit said Supporters of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol yesterday stormed a Seoul court after a judge extended the impeached leader’s detention over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law. Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the Seoul Western District Court on Saturday in a show of support for Yoon, who became South Korea’s first sitting head of state to be arrested in a dawn raid last week. After the court extended his detention on Saturday, the president’s supporters smashed windows and doors as they rushed inside the building. Hundreds of police officers charged into the court, arresting dozens and denouncing an
‘DISCRIMINATION’: The US Office of Personnel Management ordered that public DEI-focused Web pages be taken down, while training and contracts were canceled US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off. The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and called to restore “merit-based” hiring. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by former US president Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It is using one of the
One of Japan’s biggest pop stars and best-known TV hosts, Masahiro Nakai, yesterday announced his retirement over sexual misconduct allegations, reports said, in the latest scandal to rock Japan’s entertainment industry. Nakai’s announcement came after now-defunct boy band empire Johnny & Associates admitted in 2023 that its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, for decades sexually assaulted teenage boys and young men. Nakai was a member of the now-disbanded SMAP — part of Johnny & Associates’s lucrative stable — that swept the charts in Japan and across Asia during the band’s nearly 30 years of fame. Reports emerged last month that Nakai, 52, who since
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