YEMEN
British hostage freed
United Arab Emirates (UAE) forces based in Aden have freed a British hostage who had been held by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula militants, the Emirates News Agency (WAM) said yesterday. The hostage, 64-year-old Douglas Robert Semple, a petroleum engineer abducted in February last year, was rescued on Saturday and taken Aden, where he was put on a military plane and flown to Abu Dhabi, WAM said. It said he was taken to a hospital for health checks and spoke to his wife by telephone, adding that he would leave for Britain following the medical check-up. Britain’s Foreign Office confirmed in a statement that the hostage was “extracted by UAE forces in a military intelligence operation” and was “safe and well.”
GERMANY
Dinosaur footprints found
Scientists have found an unusually long trail of footprints from a 30-tonne dinosaur in an abandoned quarry in Lower Saxony, a discovery they think could be about 145 million years old. “It’s very unusual how long the trail is and what great condition it’s in,” excavation leader Benjamin Englich said at the site, referring to 90 uninterrupted footprints stretching more than 50m. Their diameter measured 1.2m. Englich and his team found the impressions while excavating at the quarry in the town of Rehburg-Loccum near Hanover on Wednesday. Englich said the elephant-like tracks were stomped into the ground sometime between 135 and 145 million years ago by a sauropod — a class of heavy dinosaurs with long necks and tails.
ARGENTINA
Treasures to head home
The government will return thousands of stolen archeological pieces to South American neighbors, President Cristina Fernandez said on Saturday. “We are doing something unusual, really special: restoring cultural wealth to other countries, in this case Ecuador and Peru. We are returning to them more than 4,000 pieces that had been stolen and have been recovered,” she said at the National Museum of Fine Art in Buenos Aires. “The world we live in is one in which great powers fight to control the cultural riches of other people. One can see in the great museums of the world pieces from Greece, Syria, Egypt, Asia and even Latin America, and which have not been returned.” Fernandez’s office did not describe the pieces in question or from whom and when they were seized.
COLOMBIA
Cuban doctors protest
About 100 Cuban doctors who deserted a humanitarian mission in Venezuela and have been stranded for months in Colombia seeking entry into the US are staging a protest in Bogota to draw attention to their plight. They say they fear the delays in processing their visa requests under a 2006 program aimed at luring Cuba’s medical talent could be a sign that US President Barack Obama is seeking to end the incentive as part of his campaign to normalize relations with Havana.
CHINA
Massive manhunt launched
Police in Hunan Province have launched a manhunt for a man accused of fatally stabbing his estranged wife and eight others. Xinhua news agency said the attacks occurred on Saturday in Longshan County. It said four people were injured. A news Web site in Hunan, rednet.cn, yesterday said that about 400 police officers were mobilized to find the suspect, identified as Wang Wensheng.
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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