CANADA
Minister dies in plane crash
Former Alberta premier and long-time-federal minister Jim Prentice and three others died in an airplane crash in southern British Columbia. The Conservative Party of Canada on Friday confirmed his death. He was 60. Prentice was among former prime minister Stephen Harper’s most trusted Cabinet ministers. He served as the minister for industry, minister of the environment and minister of Indian and northern affairs. He left federal politics for provincial politics and became premier of Alberta in 2014. Prentice, a moderate conservative who voted for same-sex marriage before many of his Conservative colleagues, was widely respected. A team of investigators from the board was on its way to the scene of the crash near Kelowna, British Columbia. Transportation Safety Board spokesman Bill Yearwood said a Cessna Citation aircraft with four people on board went down at about 10:30pm on Thursday after taking off from Kelowna on a flight to Springbank, outside Calgary.
UNITED STATES
Kansas militia accused
Three members of a Kansas militia group are accused of plotting to bomb an apartment complex that’s home to Somalian immigrants in the western Kansas meatpacking town of Garden City. Prosecutors said the thwarted attack was planned for the day after the November election. A complaint unsealed on Friday charges 49-year-old Curtis Wayne Allen, 47-year-old Patrick Eugene Stein and 49-year-old Gavin Wayne Wright with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction. The complaint said they are members of a small militia group that calls itself “the Crusaders.” Members espouse sovereign citizen, anti-government, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant extremist beliefs. The complaint alleges group members hoped to inspire other militia groups and “wake people up.”
UNITED STATES
Two charged with IS intent
Two Milwaukee men were charged in federal court on Friday with trying to join the Islamic State (IS) group by traveling through Mexico to Syria. Jason Michael Ludke, 35, is charged with attempting to support a foreign terrorist organization, and Yosvany Padilla-Conde, 30, is charged with aiding and abetting Ludke. Both men face up to 20 years in prison. According to the complaint, Ludke and Padilla-Conde began corresponding on social media with an undercover FBI agent last month and said they planned to travel to Mexico, where they could get passage to Syria and join the Islamic State group in Iraq. The agent received an e-mail on Oct. 1 containing video footage of Padilla-Conde and Ludke with a handmade Islamic State group flag in the background. The agent told Ludke that people in Mexico would be able to get them passports for Arab counties. On Oct. 5 Ludke told the agent that he and Padilla-Conde were in Texas heading toward El Paso. Police captured them later that day.
UNITED STATES
Brothel boss’ house razed
A wildfire fanned by high winds destroyed 22 homes in a wooded area of northern Nevada on Friday, among them a mountain property belonging to the owner of a famous brothel in the state. Dennis Hof, the owner of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch in the Carson City area, said on Twitter that one of his houses was destroyed by the blaze, which fire officials said had scorched 809 hectares in the area of Washoe Valley just south of Reno. Hof, who was profiled along with workers at his legal brothel in the TV series Cathouse on cable channel HBO, posted a photo of the house reduced to rubble.
CHINA
Xi inks deal with Dhaka
China has signed off on more than US$33 billion in government and private-sector investment to fund a series of large-scale infrastructure projects in Bangladesh during President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) visit to Dhaka on Friday. Xi’s visit, the first by a Chinese head of state to Bangladesh in 30 years, is part of the Asian economic giant’s ambition to advance its “One Belt, One Road” initiative — a plan devoted to reviving the ancient Silk Road trading route from Asia to Europe by boosting economic ties and investing in transport hubs.
THAILAND
Regent appointed caretaker
The government said that a regent is to be the caretaker of the monarchy while the nation mourns the death of King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Thais in their thousands descended on the Grand Palace in Bangkok yesterday to pay respects to Bhumibol, but were met with the unexpected closure of the complex. Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam appeared on television on Friday evening to explain that the head of the Privy Council, which is an advisory body to the king, is automatically the regent until a new monarch is crowned. There was no official statement that the council’s head, 96-year-old Prem Tinsulanonda, had been named regent, creating uncertainty, but Wissanu said an announcement was not needed because the process is mandated by Thailand’s constitution.
AUSTRALIA
Two arrested in drugs bust
Australian Federal Police yesterday said they had arrested two Polish men in connection with the seizure of 1.2 tonnes of crystal MDMA, the main chemical used in ecstasy pills. A raid on a storage facility in Sydney’s north on Thursday uncovered the drugs — Australia’s largest seizure this year — in a consignment of aluminum rollers imported from the Czech Republic, police said. The haul equates to more than 4.1 million ecstasy tablets, with an estimated street value of US$145 million. Two Polish men, aged 28 and 29, were arrested on Friday and charged with serious drug importation of fences. They could face life in prison if found guilty.
FRANCE
Refugee killed by train
An Iraqi refugee was killed and two others injured on Friday after being mowed down by a freight train near a camp in the northern French port of Dunkirk, authorities said. The accident occurred as the refugees were trying to cross the railway tracks near the Grande-Synthe humanitarian camp on the outskirts of Dunkirk. One of the injured was treated in hospital for shock while the other suffered a minor hip injury, the authorities said. The port of Dunkirk is situated about 40km east along the Channel coast from Calais.
INDIA
Goa secured for meeting
Goa has been turned into a high-security zone with thousands of paramilitary troops, coast guards and police guarding venues where the leaders of five emerging market economies are meeting over the weekend. Sniffer dogs and troops with mine-detectors combed the beaches next to the five-star hotel in Benaulim, where the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa were meeting for their eighth summit yesterday. Goa police also shut sections of the main road and tourists had to take long detours to reach the few beaches that are open to the public this weekend.
‘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,”
‘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
‘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
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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