UKRAINE
Twelve killed in clashes
Twelve people, including seven civilians, were killed in the past 24 hours in clashes between government forces and pro-Russian rebels in the east, officials said yesterday. The city administration of the rebel-stronghold Donetsk said 23 people were also wounded in shelling across the province. The Kiev military said 23 soldiers were injured in the fighting. The latest clashes have been focused around the government-held town of Debaltseve. The pro-Kiev head of the Donetsk interior ministry forces said government troops were still in control of the town of 25,000 yesterday morning. However, Donetsk separatist co-leader Andrei Purgin told Russia’s Interfax news agency that the Ukrainian forces were “surrounded” and unable to receive new supplies or send their wounded for treatment in regional hospitals.
CHINA
Valls skips ‘ally’ label
Visiting French Prime Minister Manuel Valls yesterday shied away at the last moment from calling China and France faithful “allies.” The description was included in the advance text of a speech to businesspeople distributed to the press. “Yes, France and China are two great nations,” it read. “Two partners pledged to work side by side. Two allies faithful to each other.” However, Valls engaged in some last-minute editing while delivering the address, on the second day of a trip seeking greater Chinese investment and business for his country. “Yes, France and China are two great nations, which like to talk of their history, of their culture... of their stubborn attachment to independence,” he said instead. Beijing sees a steady stream of Western visitors keen to express positive sentiments about their relationships in the hope of securing a slice of the Chinese market. Nonetheless, few have ever gone as far as Valls’ original text, and the phrase raised eyebrows among analysts. “It’s very strong terminology,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a China expert at Hong Kong Baptist University. “As far as I’m aware China is not a member of NATO.”
CAMBODIA
Nude Angkor posers nabbed
Three French tourists have been arrested for taking nude photos of each other inside the famed Angkor temple complex, officials said yesterday. The male tourists were discovered inside the Banteay Kdei temple at the world heritage site on Thursday, said Chau Sun Kerya, spokeswoman for the Apsara Authority, the government agency managing the Angkor complex. “The temple is a worship site and their behavior is inappropriate. They were nude,” she said. The Apsara Authority said in a statement that the three tourists have “admitted they really made a mistake by taking nude pictures.” It said that police were building a case against them.
VENEZUELA
Plane crashes after pursuit
A small civilian aircraft, pursued by Venezuelan military jets, on Thursday crashed into the Caribbean Sea near the island of Aruba, officials on the island said. Aruban Minister of Justice Arthur Dowers said in a telephone interview that he was waiting for confirmation as to whether the jets had fired on the plane. Investigators have found body parts, wreckage and packages of what appeared to be drugs at the crash scene, he said.
UNITED STATES
Putin protester takes stage
A protester carrying a sign criticizing the policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin of Russia climbed over the orchestra pit and onto the stage at the Metropolitan Opera in New York on Thursday night as the diva Anna Netrebko took her curtain call after performing the title role in Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta. The protester unfurled the sign, which appeared to be decorated with the Ukrainian flag, just as Netrebko was being showered with bravas and a bouquet of flowers. Met officials said that he had been arrested. Netrebko and the conductor for the performance, Valery Gergiev, have both been vocal supporters of Putin, and have faced protests in the West over anti-gay legislation and Russia’s actions in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.
UNITED STATES
‘Suge’ sought in hit-and-run
Los Angeles police say rap mogul Marion “Suge” Knight is a “person of interest” in a hit-and-run in Los Angeles on Thursday that left one man dead and another person in the hospital. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Trina Schrader said Knight was a “person of interest” in the case, but gave no other details. The co-founder of Death Row Records ran over two bystanders as he tried to flee a fight on a film set in the city of Compton in southern Los Angeles, Knight’s attorney James Blatt told Entertainment Weekly. Los Angeles police Lieutenant John Corina of the said authorities were treating the case as a homicide, the Los Angeles Times reported. Celebrity news Web site TMZ reported that witnesses said Knight was involved in a film shoot featuring rappers Ice Cube and Dr Dre.
ITALY
Birds ‘count left-to-right’
Humans are not the only ones to count from left to right. Researchers in Italy found that mental number lines, where numbers rise from the smallest on the left to the largest on the right, come naturally to newborn chicks too. In experiments at the University of Padua, three-day old chicks were trained to find food behind a panel bearing five bright spots. Once they had become familiar with that, they were confronted with two panels bearing different numbers of spots. Footage of the chicks showed that when faced with panels that had only two spots, the birds consistently looked behind the left of the two panels. However, when faced with eight spots on each panel, they went poking around the righthand panel. The researchers repeated the experiment with a different set of numbers and found that the chicks again went right for higher numbers and left for lower ones.
EL SALVADOR
Gang raids net 117
Police on Thursday arrested 117 people as they staged raids targeting gang members across the country, officials said. Weapons and ammunition were seized in the operations, which were conducted in the departments of San Vicente, La Paz, Cabanas and elsewhere. Although rival gangs have supposedly observed a truce since 2012, the homicide rate stands at 13 people per day.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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