■ INDIA
Protesters mark killings
More than 10,000 people took to the streets in Kolkata on Friday to remember those killed by police fire one year ago while they were demonstrating against government land use plans, authorities said. Fourteen people died in the eastern state of West Bengal last year as locals clashed with police over plans to seize farmland to make way for an industrial hub. Some of Friday's protesters carried placards reading "Shame" and "Abandon the killer communist government." West Bengal is ruled by the Communist Party of India-Marxist, which has drawn widespread criticism over the killings.
■ INDIA
Court suspends Gere case
The Supreme Court suspended on Friday legal proceedings against Richard Gere, who faced obscenity charges for publicly kissing Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty last year. Gere made headlines when he arched over and kissed Shilpa Shetty, winner of the British reality television show Celebrity Big Brother, several times on the cheek at an anti-AIDS show in New Delhi. Chief Justice of India K. G. Balakrishnan and Justice R. V. Raveendran stayed the arrest warrants against Gere and granted permission for him to travel to India, criticizing the complainant for his "moral policing" and observed, "such complaints are publicity hunting. You are bringing a bad name to this country."
■ Philippines
Hand grenade kills three
Three people were killed and 19 injured when a drunk detonated a hand grenade he had been toying with at a village dance in the south, the town police chief said yesterday. The man was among the dead at the village in Suluk town on the island of Mindanao, Inspector Imalex Mabalot said. It was unclear where the man obtained the grenade but there are many armed groups in the south, including Muslim and communist guerrillas, with access to weapons.
■ INDONESIA
New bird discovered
A small greenish bird that has been playing hide-and-seek with ornithologists on a remote island since 1996 was declared a newly discovered species on Friday and promptly recommended for endangered lists. The new species is called the Togian white-eye, or Zosterops somadikartai. It was first spotted by Mochamad Indrawan of the University of Indonesia and his colleague Sunarto. "We observed the species in the field from 1997 to 2003," Indrawan said. Pamela Rasmussen, a taxonomist at Michigan State University, completed the identification, reported in the Wilson Journal of Ornithology. Togian white-eyes are small, greenish-colored and have conspicuous white eye-rings.
■ UNITED NATIONS
Countries lax on sex tourism
India, Cambodia and Thailand are not doing enough to protect children against the risks associated with sex tourism for fear of damaging their economies, a UN human rights expert said on Friday. Juan Miguel Petit, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of children, said authorities are often not willing to tackle the issue of children's sexual exploitation for tourists' benefit. "Sometimes there are big pressures on governments, explicitly or implicitly, when there are enormous touristic activities going on, making millions of dollars," he said. He denounced this "insane tourism that puts at risk the lives of hundreds and hundreds of children," saying it was against the public interest in such countries.
■ CZECH REPUBLIC
Mail bags found in tunnel
Construction workers have made a discovery that should come as good news to the thousands of foreigners who might never have heard back from Czechs they wrote to between 2001 and 2006. Their mail ended up in a train tunnel. The Czech Post said on Friday that 60 postal bags of mail and parcels that were mailed from other countries were found by workers renovating an unused tunnel at a train station in the southeastern town of Breclav. Postal spokesman Gabriel Pleska called the discovery "unprecedented"and "shocking," and said police are determined to find out who is to blame.
■ GERMANY
Police shoot US soldier
Police shot and killed a US Army soldier in Bavaria after he took a former girlfriend hostage, police said on Friday. The 30-year-old soldier, armed with a M-4 assault rifle, broke into the German woman's apartment in Koenigsberg on Thursday night, the police said. He tied her up, but she managed to escape and notify the police. Officers then sealed off the area around the apartment building and searched in on foot and with a helicopter equipped with a thermal camera. When police officers attempted to arrest the soldier, he threatened them with his gun, leading them to open fire, the police said. He died at a local hospital on Friday morning. It was unclear whether he had been shot once or multiple times.
■ FINLAND
Artist charged over porn
Prosecutors have pressed charges against Helsinki artist Ulla Karttunen over her photographic exhibition of child pornography. Karttunen could in theory face two years in jail, although news agency STT on Friday said prosecutors are seeking a fine having acknowledged her artistic aims. Karttunen said the work criticizes child porn and is comprised of pictures found on the Internet. While attacking police for "fighting against the power of critical art," she acknowledged that the images at the center of the debate "should not exist," the daily Helsingin Sanomat reported. The photos were confiscated by police from the Kluuvi Gallery last month after a member of the public complained. Karttunen's home was also searched with a computer and camera memory card taken by investigators.
■ SYRIA
School bus crash kills 24
Twenty-three high-school students were killed on Friday when a bus carrying them on a recreation trip overturned and hit a house in a coastal Tartous Province, officials said. The owner of the house was also killed. A total of 31 people, mostly students, were injured, nine of them in critical condition, the officials said. The bus was going too fast and the driver lost control on a curve, one official said. President Bashar al-Assad ordered a sharp increase in traffic fines last month in an attempt to lower accidents.
■ RUSSIA
Brother defends Viktor Bout
The case against alleged arms dealer Viktor Bout who was arrested earlier this month in Thailand was fabricated and unjust, his brother said on Friday. "If he's such a bandit, then show me some facts. If you can't, then it's all lies," said Sergei Bout, 47. "He's just a normal guy." Sergei said his brother was only a "transporter" of air cargo who never knew what the planes he chartered were carrying. Sergei said the family and business associates were preparing a documentary film about Bout's life, to be called Who Are You, Viktor Bout?
■ PERU
Lawmakers defend coca use
Lawmakers defiantly chewed coca in congress on Thursday while criticizing a UN recommendation to criminalize traditional uses of the plant. The coca leaf, the raw ingredient of cocaine, is used by millions of people to stave off hunger and fight altitude sickness. It is also used in teas, in cooking and by fortune tellers. "The coca leaf has existed for thousands and thousands of years. It's part of our agriculture, our food and our medicine. It's sacred," Congresswoman Hilaria Supa told reporters before the start of Thursday's session. "The United Nations doesn't know our culture. It doesn't understand our values."
■ COLOMBIA
UN condemns killings
Six organizers of a recent march to protest violence by the state and paramilitary death squads have been killed and more than two dozen threatened with death, the UN and the Movement of Victims of State Crimes said on Friday. The victims, including union workers and human rights activists, were killed around the time of the March 6 national protest, they said. "On March 12, organizations connected with the protest received an e-mail with threats made by the `Black Eagles' [a death squad], which came with a list of 28 human-rights defenders saying the group would be implacable with those people who had organized the protest," said Ivan Cepeda, director of the victims' movement. The UN human rights agency condemned the threats and demanded the killings be investigated.
■ UNITED STATES
Woman finds grenade
The police department in Corpus Christi, Texas, was briefly evacuated after a woman brought in a hand grenade she found. The unidentified woman handed it to an officer on Thursday after finding it while cleaning out a relative's belongings. The officer immediately took it outside the building and police cleared the building until the bomb squad took it away and detonated it about an hour later. "When we countercharged it, it went boom," bomb squad supervisor Lieutenant James Brandon told the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, an online newspaper.
■ COSTA RICA
Drug smuggler falls sick
An American was caught smuggling 0.4kg of cocaine in his stomach after he went into convulsions on a plane bound for Miami, Florida, police said on Friday. The 22-year-old man swallowed dozens of capsules stuffed with the drug before boarding a plane on Thursday in San Jose. The authorities said he started to vomit and convulse before the plane took off and was rushed to a hospital where he was still recovering on Friday. "They had to open him up to remove the capsules," a police spokeswoman said.
■ UNITED STATES
Droopy pants banned
The Florida Senate wants public school students to pull up their pants. Lawmakers passed a bill on Thursday that could mean suspensions for students with droopy britches. It won't become law unless the House of Representatives passes a companion measure. Florida could join several southern US towns and cities that have passed "saggy pants" laws aimed at outlawing what some teenagers consider a fashion statement -- wearing pants half way down their buttocks, exposing flesh or underwear. Supporters say schools sometimes don't properly police dress codes and parents are often "under aware" of what their kids are wearing to school. Critics say the measure is unnecessary.
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
Seven people sustained mostly minor injuries in an airplane fire in South Korea, authorities said yesterday, with local media suggesting the blaze might have been caused by a portable battery stored in the overhead bin. The Air Busan plane, an Airbus A321, was set to fly to Hong Kong from Gimhae International Airport in southeastern Busan, but caught fire in the rear section on Tuesday night, the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. A total of 169 passengers and seven flight attendants and staff were evacuated down inflatable slides, it said. Authorities initially reported three injuries, but revised the number
EYEING A SOLUTION: In unusually critical remarks about Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump said he was ‘destroying Russia by not making a deal’ US President Donald Trump on Wednesday stepped up the pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to make a peace deal with Ukraine, threatening tougher economic measures if Moscow does not agree to end the war. Trump’s warning in a social media post came as the Republican seeks a quick solution to a grinding conflict that he had promised to end before even starting his second term. “If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other
‘BALD-FACED LIE’: The woman is accused of administering non-prescribed drugs to the one-year-old and filmed the toddler’s distress to solicit donations online A social media influencer accused of filming the torture of her baby to gain money allegedly manufactured symptoms causing the toddler to have brain surgery, a magistrate has heard. The 34-year-old Queensland woman is charged with torturing an infant and posting videos of the little girl online to build a social media following and solicit donations. A decision on her bail application in a Brisbane court was yesterday postponed after the magistrate opted to take more time before making a decision in an effort “not to be overwhelmed” by the nature of allegations “so offensive to right-thinking people.” The Sunshine Coast woman —
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