MEXICO
Dog leads police to grisly find
Police in the country’s south on Wednesday said that they found a dismembered human body after spotting a dog trotting down the street with a human arm in its mouth. It was the third time in the past month that canines have been seen in the country trotting off with human body parts. Police in the southern state of Oaxaca said they responded to a call on Wednesday morning about “a black dog that carried in its mouth a human arm.” State prosecutors later said the discovery led them to find other parts of the dismembered body in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Oaxaca City, the state capital. The victim’s cause of death and identity were not immediately known. Late last month, residents of a town in the state of Zacatecas saw a dog running down the street with a human head in its mouth. Police eventually managed to wrest the head away from the dog.
UNITED STATES
Quake hits west Texas
A strong earthquake shook a sparsely populated patch of desert in west Texas yesterday, causing tremors felt as far away as the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez. The magnitude 5.3 earthquake struck at about 3:30pm, said Jim DeBerry, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in the west Texas city of Midland. He said the strength of the quake means it likely caused damage in the remote oil patch and scrubland, but none had been reported so far. DeBerry said the epicenter was about 37km south of Mentone.
NIGERIA
At least 12 killed in attack
Gunmen have killed at least 12 people in an attack on a village in the northern state of Plateau, residents and the state governor said on Wednesday, the latest deadly incident fueled by growing pressure on land resources in the country. Violence between farmers and pastoralists has become increasingly common in the past few years as population growth leads to an expansion of the area dedicated to farming, leaving less land available for open grazing by nomads’ herds of cattle. A local resident, Bernard Matur, said the gunmen attacked Maikatako village on Monday evening.
SRI LANKA
Call to free protest leaders
The government is being urged to drop charges against two protest leaders detained for more than three months following the anti-government demonstrations that engulfed the island-nation earlier this year. Amnesty International also renewed its call for the country to repeal the harsh, civil war-era Prevention of Terrorism Act under which the two protest leaders are being held. Wasantha Mudalige and Galwewa Siridhamma, both university student leaders, were arrested in August and have been detained for more than 90 days under the act.
UNITED STATES
Mall security guard killed
A security guard was fatally shot inside a Chicago-area shopping mall on Wednesday, police said. Two men tried to rob a jewelry store at the mall, but were met by the security guard, police said. The robbers then pulled out weapons and fire several rounds. The shooting occurred just after noon at River Oaks Center in Calumet City. The guard was transported to a hospital, where he later died. About 20 people were inside the mall at the time of the shooting and police were working to interview them, Calumet City spokesman Sean Howard said.
Sitting in a lotus position, four men weave glittering beads through gold thread on an organza sheet, carefully constructing a wedding dress that would soon wow crowds at Paris Fashion Week. For once, the French couturier behind the design, Julien Fournie, is determined to put these craftsmen in the spotlight. His new collection, which showed in Paris on Tuesday, was entirely made with fabrics from Mumbai. He said that a sort of “design imperialism” means that French fashion houses often play down that their fabrics are made outside France. “The houses which don’t admit it are perhaps afraid of losing their clientele,” Fournie
A court in Thailand sentenced a 27-year-old political activist to 28 years in prison on Thursday for posting messages on Facebook that it said defamed the country’s monarchy, while two young women charged with the same offense continued a hunger strike after being hospitalized. The court in the northern province of Chiang Rai found that Mongkhon Thirakot contravened the lese majeste law in 14 of 27 posts for which he was arrested in August last year. The law covers the king, queen and heirs, and any regent. The lese majeste law carries a prison term of three to 15 years per incident for
A gunman killed 10 people and wounded 10 others at a Los Angeles-area ballroom dance club following a Lunar New Year celebration, setting off a manhunt for the suspect in the latest mass shooting tragedy in an American community. Captain Andrew Meyer of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department said Sunday that the wounded were taken to hospitals and their conditions range from stable to critical. He said the 10 people died at the scene in the city of Monterey Park. Meyer said people were “pouring out of the location screaming” when officers arrived at around 10:30 pm Saturday. He said officers then
INSTABILITY: The country has seen a 33 percent increase in land that cultivates poppies since the military took over the government in 2021, a UN report said The production of opium in Myanmar has flourished since the military’s seizure of power, with the cultivation of poppies up by one-third in the past year, as eradication efforts have dropped and the faltering economy has led more people toward the drug trade, a UN report released yesterday showed. Last year, the first full growing season since the military wrested control of the country from the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, saw a 33 percent increase in Myanmar’s cultivation area to 40,100 hectares, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime report said. “Economic, security and governance disruptions