GERMANY
Suspected arson kills four
Police have detained a woman on suspicion of arson after a fire at an apartment block in Saarbruecken killed four people. Police yesterday said the 37-year-old was a resident of the building. The fire on Sunday in the five-story building killed four and injured at least 23. A 42-year-old man was severely injured when he jumped off the roof of the burning building. More than 100 firefighters were on the scene to rescue residents from their apartments. The fire apparently broke out on the first or second floor of the building and then quickly made its way to higher floors.
TURKEY
Tax evasion called ‘treason’
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday said that businesspeople who move assets abroad are committing “treason,” adding that his government should put an end to the practice. “I am aware that some businessmen are attempting to place their assets overseas. I call on the government not to authorize any such moves, because these are acts of treason,” Erdogan said in televised comments to party members. He did not name names, but his comments came two days after prosecutors ordered the seizure of assets of a gold trader testifying in a New York trial against a banker accused of violating US sanctions against Iran.
UNITED KINGDOM
Half support new EU vote
Half of Britons support a second vote on whether to leave the EU and a third said they would be worse off financially outside the bloc, an opinion poll showed. The poll, published in the Mail on Sunday newspaper, showed that 34 percent rejected another referendum and 16 percent said they did not know. The newspaper said it was the first major opinion poll since last week’s media reports that Britain is preparing to pay about 50 billion euros (US$59.3 billion) to help to pave the way for talks on a future trade pact with the EU. The online poll, carried out by research firm Survation, interviewed 1,003 adults in Britain from Thursday to Friday last week.
GERMANY
Box of nails was blackmail
A suspicious package containing nails that led to a bomb scare at a Christmas market was part of a blackmailing plot against the delivery company DHL, German authorities said on Sunday. Brandenburg State Minister of the Interior Karl-Heinz Schroeter told reporters the package was part of a scheme to extort millions of euros from DHL. It was delivered on Friday to a pharmacy on the same street as the market in Potsdam and later destroyed in a controlled explosion. Schroeter said the market itself most likely was not a target. The person who sent the parcel was still at large, he said. The market was reopened on Saturday with an increased police presence.
UNITED STATES
Two stabbed over parking
A man angry about a parking dispute on Sunday stabbed two people and then drove into a group of pedestrians on a sidewalk in New York City, leaving one dead and several injured, one critically, police said. The altercation started at about 4:30am outside a hookah lounge, when the driver of a sedan got out of his car and stabbed two other people, New York Police Department Assistant Chief David Barrere said. A dispute ensued with others outside the club and the man drove his car up onto the sidewalk and into a crowd of people before leaving the scene, Barrere said. It was unclear if the pedestrians were involved in the dispute. Authorities said the driver was in custody.
HONG KONG
Flight crew spot missile
The crew of a Cathay Pacific flight from San Francisco to the territory reported seeing a North Korean ballistic missile break up and fall out of the sky last week, the airline has said. Flight trackers put the plane close to Japan around the time of Pyongyang’s Hwasong-15 missile test on Wednesday. The missile fell into the Sea of Japan. “The flight crew of CX893 reported a sighting of what is suspected to be the re-entry of the recent DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] test missile,” an airline spokesman said. “Though the flight was far from the event location, the crew advised Japan [air traffic control] according to procedures.” The South China Morning Post yesterday quoted Cathay Pacific general manager of operations Mark Hoey as saying the message from the pilots to ground staff was: “Be advised, we witnessed the DPRK missile blow up and fall apart near our current location.” A Cathay Pacific cargo plane — CX096 — might have been even closer to the missile, at a lateral distance of a few hundred meters, Hoey added.
AUSTRALIA
‘Kwaussie’ now key word
Inspired by a dual citizenship crisis plaguing the nation’s political world, the term “Kwaussie” — a mix of Kiwi and Aussie — was yesterday named word of the year. The portmanteau term referring to a person who is both Australian and a New Zealander had been used sparingly in the past, but took on a new lease of life when Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce found out in August that he also had Kiwi citizenship. “In a time of covfefe, fake news, and tweetstorms, the Australian National Dictionary Centre has looked for a word of the year that is both lexically interesting and Australian,” center director Amanda Laugesen said in a statement. “We were able to trace it back to print in a Wellington newspaper in 2002 referring to Russell Crowe.” The actor was born in New Zealand, but has long called Australia home.
INDIA
Rahul Gandhi seeks post
Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, yesterday submitted nomination papers to succeed his mother as president of main opposition Congress party, which ruled the nation for decades. Without a serious rival for the top party post, he is set to be elected Dec. 16. He faces a challenging task of reinvigorating his party, which was ousted from power by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014. He is set to become the sixth member of the Nehru-Gandhi family to lead Congress.
JAPAN
Officials probing thefts
Officials yesterday said they were investigating a group of North Korean fishermen after items — reportedly including solar panels, a fridge, a television and an anime poster — disappeared from a remote island where they had taken shelter. The coast guard first spotted the group of 10’s rickety vessel off Hokkaido on Wednesday as it struggled during poor weather. They briefly landed on an uninhabited island to take refuge, but soon after the group left, officials noticed items from buildings on the island had vanished. A washing machine and blankets were also missing from a shelter facility for local fishermen, state broadcaster NHK reported. Meanwhile, the coast guard said three bodies were found off northern Yamagata Prefecture. NHK reported that one of the three wore a badge with a photograph of Kim Il-sung, who founded the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in 1948.
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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