UNITED KINGDOM
Junior doctors stage strike
Hospital doctors on Tuesday staged their first strike in four decades, disrupting treatment for thousands of patients in the National Health Service and escalating political tensions over the publicly funded healthcare system. Operations were postponed and appointments canceled in a bitter dispute over pay and working hours between employers and junior doctors, a term that covers medical professionals with as much as a decade of experience. A proposed new contract would increase basic pay, but reduce the number of hours for which junior doctors receive added compensation for work, particularly on Saturdays. The government insists that doctors would not be worse off under the new contract, but that is disputed by the British Medical Association.
UNITED STATES
Selfie leads to arrest
Police in Lima, Ohio, said a man who sent them a selfie because he did not like the mug shot they were using has been arrested in Florida. Donald Pugh was arrested on Tuesday in Century and is being held on another warrant out of Georgia. Police said Pugh is also wanted for failing to appear in court and is a person of interest in several cases. They said Pugh sent them a picture of himself in a sport coat and sunglasses along with a message stating: “Here is a better photo that one is terrible.” The Lima police department posted a new mug shot of a smiling Pugh on Facebook after his arrest in Florida.
MEXICO
Hunt for wedding guests
Soldiers and police are searching for up to 17 people who were abducted by gunmen on Saturday as the group headed to a wedding in Guerrero. A state security department official said that 10 people were reported missing, but Guerrero Governor Hector Astudillo said the mayor of Arcelia reported that more people were taken away. State police had reported over the weekend that at least seven people were kidnapped by an armed group that intercepted a convoy of vehicles heading to the village of La Palma. The bullet-riddled bodies of two men were found at the scene of the abduction along with about 15 abandoned cars, including two that were burned, and two motorcycles. A third body was found 300m from the road. Hundreds of people — relatives of the missing and residents of Arcelia — on Tuesday held a protest in the town.
UNITED STATES
FBI targets Super Bowl sex
For the first time in the FBI’s efforts to crack down on sex trafficking during the Super Bowl, the agency is to try to reach out to women and girls selling sex in the lead-up to the game. FBI officials said the goal is to give them a way out and get them to turn against their traffickers. The approach would rely on local nonprofit groups making initial contact with victims before the bureau steps in to provide them with access to its advocates and other services.
UNITED STATES
Plane lands on freeway
Southern California motorists were shocked when a small plane made an emergency landing on a freeway on Monday just as the evening commute was getting underway. The California Highway Patrol said vehicles had to swerve to avoid hitting the two-seat aircraft when it touched down on State Route 23 in Ventura County. Student-pilot Danielle Lagree told the Ventura County Star she was flying with her instructor when the engine began to sputter. The instructor took over and landed the plane. Nobody was hurt.
PAKISTAN
Suicide bomber kills 15
A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a polio vaccination centre in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta yesterday, killing at least 15 people, mainly police, officials said. The policemen had been gathering outside the center to accompany polio workers for the third day of a vaccination campaign, which are frequently targeted by militant attacks in the country, in the violence-wracked province of Balochistan, of which Quetta is the capital.
HONG KONG
Leader pushes integration
Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying (梁振英) yesterday announced steps to boost integration with China, pinning the territory’s future on the success of Beijing’s international “One Belt, One Road” concept. Leung said during his annual policy address that the territory would play a significant role in promoting the new “silk road” spreading from Western China to Central Asia and Europe. “Hong Kong is well-positioned to capture the wealth of the Belt and Road,” Leung said. Four lawmakers were removed for heckling Leung during his speech over a lack of substance and his failure to mention concerns over the disappearance of five people linked to a publisher and bookstore, widely feared to have been illegally abducted by Chinese agents.
AUSTRALIA
MH370 search finds wreck
The hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has uncovered a shipwreck deep underwater, officials said yesterday, the second such discovery since the search began almost two years ago. An Australian-led team continues to scour the southern Indian Ocean seabed in hope of finding the final resting place of MH370, which vanished on March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. In July last year, a 2m-long flaperon wing part washed up on a beach on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion and was confirmed to be from the ill-fated flight, marking the first concrete evidence that it met a tragic end. Nothing has been found since, despite more than 80,000km2 of the seafloor being searched. However, another shipwreck — an iron or steel-hulled vessel believed to have gone down at the turn of the 19th century — has been discovered about 3,700m deep.
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
US tourist gang-raped
A US woman hiking in the country with her London-based boyfriend was gang-raped and three of her fingers slashed in a brutal attack along a famous World War II trail, a report said yesterday. Police said the pair, both aged 31, were on the Kokoda Track, which runs through the jungles of the island state off Australia’s northeastern tip, when they were attacked and stripped of their belongings including mobile phones, shoes, backpacks and 15,000 kina (USUS$5,000) in cash. “Two expatriate tourists, a male and a female, both 31, were trekking the Kokoda Track and heading towards Templeton Two [a campsite] when they were ambushed by armed men,” Assistant Police Commissioner Sylvester Kalaut told the National newspaper of the Monday ambush. “The male trekker was tied to a tree and the female tracker was repeatedly raped before three of her fingers were chopped. The incident took place for an hour before they [trekkers] were set free.” Police described the attack as a gang-rape and told the newspaper at least two suspects carrying bush knives and spears were involved. One was being held by villagers, the National added. The couple fled to a village and were taken to the capital, Port Moresby, where they were given medical attention.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
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