UNITED STATES
‘Sorry’: Alabama governor
Alabama Governor Robert Bentley has apologized to India after police seriously injured an Indian grandfather who was visiting relatives. The incident on Feb. 6 in the city of Madison was captured on a police car’s dashcam video and widely seen on the Internet. “I deeply regret the unfortunate use of excessive force by the Madison Police Department on Sureshbhai Patel,” Bentley said in a letter sent Tuesday. “Please accept our sincere apology for this tragic incident to your government, Mr Patel, and the citizens of India who reside and work in our state,” he said in the letter, which was addressed to India’s consul general in Georgia.
FRANCE
Vandalism charges filed
Five teenagers were charged on Wednesday with vandalizing hundreds of Jewish graves last week in a suspected anti-Semitic act that shocked the nation. The boys, aged 15 to 17, were charged with “the desecration of burial places due to the religion of the deceased” and with deliberately vandalizing property on public land, according to prosecutor Philippe Vannier. About 250 tombs were vandalized at a Jewish cemetery in the Sarre-Union, with tombstones pushed over and vaults opened. Vannier said the vandalism appeared to be part of a game that went wrong.
UNITED STATES
Indian workers win lawsuit
A New Orleans jury on Wednesday awarded US$14 million to five Indian men who were lured to the country and forced to work under inhumane conditions after Hurricane Katrina by a ship repair firm and its codefendants. After a four-week trial, a jury ruled that Alabama-based Signal International was guilty of labor trafficking, fraud, racketeering and discrimination and ordered it to pay US$12 million. Its co-defendants, a New Orleans lawyer and an India-based recruiter, were also found guilty and ordered to pay US$915,000 each. The trial was the first in more than a dozen related lawsuits with more than 200 plaintiffs.
UNITED STATES
Jenner blamed for crash
Video shows Bruce Jenner started a chain-reaction crash that resulted in a woman’s death on a Malibu highway, a law enforcement official said on Wednesday. Jenner was hauling an off-road vehicle on a trailer behind his Cadillac Escalade on Feb. 7 when he steered to avoid cars slowing for a traffic light in front of him on Pacific Coast Highway, the official said. Jenner’s SUV rear-ended two cars, pushing a Lexus into oncoming traffic, the official added. The driver, Kim Howe, 69, was killed when it was struck head-on by a Hummer. The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department is investigating the cause of the wreck and will consider whether to issue a citation that could result in criminal charges.
UNITED STATES
Marijuana tricks brain: study
Using marijuana on a full stomach might still cause the munchies, flipping a switch in the brain that usually tells the body it is not hungry, a study found. The findings were the opposite of what researchers said they expected — the neurons should have been turned off since the mice in the study had just eaten, said senior study author Tamas Horvath, a professor of biomedical research and comparative medicine at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut. “It fools the brain’s central feeding system,” he said. The results may provide a way to help cancer patients who lose their appetite during treatment, he said.
JAPAN
China talks planned: report
The government plans to resume security talks with China as early as April after a four-year hiatus amid simmering tensions over territorial disputes, Kyodo News said yesterday. The talks, which will likely focus on maritime issues, will involve top foreign and defense officials from both sides, including Deputy Foreign Minister Shinsuke Sugiyama, it said. Asked about the report, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters “there is nothing decided at this point.” “It’s important that both countries exchange communications in various fields... as Japan and China are neighbors, whom the global community is watching closely,” he said.
NORTH KOREA
Kim signals more purges
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has signaled he may further purge top cadres, ordering senior Workers’ Party members to carry out a “campaign against abuse of power, bureaucratism, irregularities and corruption.” The party adopted the resolution at a politburo meeting to review his three years in power, the official Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The statement called on members to implement the behests of his late father Kim Jong-il, “unconditionally carrying out them to the last without an inch of deflection and a single step of concession.”
NIGER
Dozens killed in airstrike
At least 36 civilians were killed when a military plane bombed a funeral party in a border village, the government said, in an incident its deputy mayor blamed on the Nigerian air force. The air crew was likely to have mistaken the villagers, who had gathered near a mosque, for Boko Haram militants, Niger military sources in the nearby town of Bosso said. The Nigerian military did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment about Tuesday’s incident, into which the Niger government said it had launched an inquiry. The government decreed three days of national mourning.
MALAYSIA
PM trashes ‘order to kill’
Prime Minister Najib Razak yesterday dismissed as “rubbish” a former police commando’s claim that he was ordered by “important people” to kill a woman linked to highly sensitive corruption allegations. “It’s total rubbish. Total rubbish,” Razak, in a rare comment on the affair, said in a brief remark to reporters, according to news Web site Malaysian Insider. Policeman Sirul Azhar Umar, who fled abroad to avoid being hanged and is now in Australian custody, is a key figure in a scandal relating to the government’s 2002 purchase of French submarines. That deal has long been clouded by accusations of huge kickbacks to Malaysian officials and the murder of a Mongolian woman who purportedly acted as a translator in the negotiations.
AUSTRALIA
Abbott denies being a bully
Prime Minister Tony Abbott yesterday attempted to play down allegations of bullying Indonesia as a diplomatic rift deepens between the uneasy neighbors over Jakarta’s planned executions of two Australian drug smugglers. Abbott drew strong criticism from Jakarta on Wednesday for linking his pleas for clemency for the pair to Australia’s aid to Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami. He said he was referring to “the obvious strength of the relationship” between the two countries. “I was pointing out the depth of the friendship between Australia and Indonesia and the fact that Australia has been there for Indonesia when Indonesia has been in difficulty,” he said.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
‘PLAINLY ERRONEOUS’: The justice department appealed a Trump-appointed judge’s blocking of the release of a report into election interference by the incoming president US Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal cases against US president-elect Donald Trump on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents, has resigned after submitting his investigative report on Trump, an expected move that came amid legal wrangling over how much of that document can be made public in the days ahead. The US Department of Justice disclosed Smith’s departure in a footnote of a court filing on Saturday, saying he had resigned one day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump is inaugurated, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions
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