■CHINA
Police may be disarmed
Police facing emotional strains because of financial or romantic problems could be stripped of their handguns in Jiangxi Province, a newspaper reported yesterday. The public security bureau in the province will begin inspections this month to make sure officers who have received administrative punishments, or are under investigation, will not be able to carry guns, the Southern Metropolis Daily said. Guns would also be retrieved from “officers who are suffering from serious illnesses or face psychological and emotional instability resulting from love or marriage frustrations and heavy debt,” it said.
■INDONESIA
Padlocked pants criticized
A move by massage parlors to padlock workers’ pants to prevent prostitution has caused outrage, with one minister branding it an “insult” to women, reports said yesterday. Minister Meutia Fardia Hatta Swasono reacted angrily to reports of locks being fitted to the pants of female staff in a small town where massage parlors are often used as a front for prostitution. “It’s not the right way to prevent promiscuity. It insults women as if they are the ones in the wrong,” Swasono, the minister for women’s empowerment, told the Jakarta Post. The daily said authorities in Batu in East Java had ordered masseuses to wear the locks to protect the town’s reputation.
■MALAYSIA
Opposition leader has stroke
The leader of the fundamentalist opposition Islamic party was hospitalized yesterday after suffering a mild stroke, his party said. Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS) President Hadi Awang was reported to be in stable condition and could be discharged in the next few days, PAS secretary-general Kamarudin Jaffar said in a statement. “He is able to talk,” Hadi’s spokesman Roslan Shahir said. Hadi, a Muslim cleric who led PAS since 2002, won a parliamentary and a state seat in his home state of Terengganu.
■NEW ZEALAND
Cops may hire in Singapore
Chinese-speaking police officers may be hired from Singapore to meet the needs of the fast-growing Asian population, a newspaper reported yesterday. A spokesman for Police Minister Annette King told the New Zealand Herald that a final decision had yet to be made. “If that happened, we’d be recruiting very experienced police who could speak Chinese,” the spokesman said. The paper said that police commissioners of the two countries had reached an agreement in principle. “Singapore has a similar-size force serving the same population, and also their policing ethos is remarkably similar to ours,” said Inspector John Mitchell, police development manager for Auckland.
■SPAIN
Muslim writer cancels visit
A former Muslim author and journalist who made headlines when he was baptized by the pope last month canceled a visit over concerns for his safety, his Spanish publisher said on Wednesday. Magdi Allam, an Egyptian-born Italian citizen, had been scheduled to present the Spanish edition of his book Conquering Fear: My Life Against Islamic Terrorism and the Unconsciousness of the West at a Madrid university on Wednesday. Allam, a critic of religious extremism who defends Israel’s right to exist, has for years received death threats from Islamic radicals, the statement said.
■BENIN
Priests pray for Betancourt
Voodoo priests cried out in tongues and made sacrificial offerings on Wednesday, imploring God and the ancestors to help free French-Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt from the hands of Colombian rebels. The ritual by initiates in the West African home of the ancient religion was part of a three-day program of fasting and prayer decreed by President Thomas Yayi Boni for Betancourt, who has been held hostage since 2002. Sarkozy says Betancourt is ill and close to death and has made it a priority to secure her release. The 46-year-old French-Colombian citizen was kidnapped while campaigning for the Colombian presidency.
■BRAZIL
Underpants draw bidders
He is accused of being one of the world’s most powerful cocaine traffickers, a Colombian kingpin allegedly responsible for more than 300 murders. But when Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadia’s belongings went on sale on Tuesday in Sao Paulo, the best-selling items were not the plasma screen televisions or his designer sunglasses. They were his underpants. Pnina Spett, a volunteer saleswoman, told Globo television that Abadia’s pants had become “folklore” after he was arrested half-naked last year by federal police at his Sao Paulo hideout. The shoppers “came straight for the Y-fronts,” she said. This month he was sentenced to 30 years in prison on drug charges.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Diggers make breakthrough
Archaeologists conducting a major excavation at Stonehenge said they had made a key breakthrough that may help explain why the site was built, the BBC said on Wednesday. The team has reached a series of sockets that once held bluestones, smaller stones, most of which are now missing, that made up Stonehenge’s original structure. The bluestones were transported from Wales and the researchers think they were brought to Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire because ancient people believed they had healing properties. The team must now extract material from the holes left by the bluestones to better date when they first arrived.
■RUSSIA
Poisoner faces life sentence
A man is facing life in jail for killing at least six people, including his wife and daughter, by adding poison to their food and watching their agonizing deaths, the Vesti news program reported on Wednesday. Vyacheslav Solovyov started inventing poisons to test on humans some six years ago, it said. Solovyov has been charged with six murders and four attempted poisonings. The poisonings have shocked the central town of Yaroslavl and Solovyov has asked for his trial to be held behind closed doors. “He has pleaded guilty to a majority of the killings, but his motives remain unclear,” the report said. Two previous examinations found him to be criminally sane.
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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