■THAILAND
PM talks to protesters
Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat said yesterday he had opened a dialogue with protesters who have been occupying his official compound for three weeks, in a bid to end a campaign that has alarmed investors. Somchai, a brother-in-law of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, declined to discuss details of what he had said to leaders of the People’s Alliance for Democracy, but said he was optimistic there would be positive results. “We all are Thais and we should not hate each other for ever. Our differences on ideas can be ironed out through dialogue,” Somchai told reporters.
■SINGAPORE
Suspect in killings nabbed
Police arrested a 42-year-old man on suspicion of killing three women and wounding a fourth in a stabbing attack early yesterday, a rare spasm of violence in the tightly controlled city-state. Police said in a statement that two knives were found at the scene of the attack, an apartment complex in the Yishun neighborhood. They said the suspect and victims are of Chinese descent, but couldn’t confirm if they were Singaporeans or Chinese nationals.
■NEPAL
Bus crash kills 14
A bus rolled off a mountain highway and crashed into a river yesterday, killing at least 14 people and injuring 25 others, police said. The bus plummeted 180m down the mountainside before slamming into the river in Mahadev Beshi village, about 160km west of Kathmandu, police official Thakur Prasad Poudel said. The injured were taken to hospitals in nearby towns, and police and soldiers were searching the river for other victims, Poudel said. Initial reports suggested the driver lost control of the vehicle.
■SRI LANKA
Military, rebels claim win
Soldiers and sailors killed 63 Tamil Tiger rebels on a second day of fierce combat in the northern part of the country, the military said yesterday. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) said they had repulsed an army advance, killed 25 troops and wounded 40 in Vannirakulam, the site of heavy fighting for weeks, a pro-rebel Web site quoted unnamed rebel officials as saying. There was no independent confirmation of the casualties from Thursday’s battles, which followed one of the single bloodiest days of fighting since the military cranked up an offensive drive three months ago. At least 71 were killed on Wednesday.
■HONG KONG
Wild boar shot dead
A wild boar was shot dead after going on a five-hour rampage during which it injured three people and kept trapping teams at bay, police said yesterday. The 120kg boar was fighting with two dogs in rural Yuen Long near the border with China when it burst into a village house on Thursday afternoon. It bit a father and son aged 76 and 54 as they tried to drive it out of the house and injured a neighbor who tried to help, a police spokesman said.
■INDIA
Headmistress locks up kids
A headmistress of a primary school locked 350 pupils in a classroom for 10 hours without food or water because she found money was missing from her bag, the Hindustan Times reported yesterday. The imprisoned pupils were eventually freed by their parents, who broke open the doors when they heard them screaming, it said. Nearly a dozen pupils fainted during the ordeal in the school in the state of Uttar Pradesh. The report said the headmistress had been suspended.
■UNITED KINGDOM
J.K. Rowling wins honor
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has been honored for her services to the Scottish city in which she dreamed up adventures for her world-famous boy wizard. Judges said yesterday that Rowling was the unanimous choice to receive the 2008 Edinburgh Award, in recognition of her contributions to Scotland’s capital. Rowling said she was honored. “Edinburgh is very much home for me and is the place where Harry evolved over seven books and many, many hours of writing in its cafes,” Rowling said. Edinburgh’s ceremonial head, Lord Provost George Grubb, said Rowling was “a tremendous asset to the city, not least for her writing prowess but also for her philanthropy and the vast amount of support she gives to numerous charities.”
■SOUTH AFRICA
Arms firm charges dropped
Prosecutors said on Thursday they would provisionally withdraw charges against a French arms company connected with the corruption case against ANC leader Jacob Zuma, thrown out by a judge last week. “We will have to provisionally withdraw,” SAPA news agency quoted National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) spokesman Tlali Tlali as saying. Tlali said the decision was taken because French company Thint was co-accused with Zuma. A judge threw out Zuma’s case and said there had been high-level meddling in it. The NPA will challenge that judgement.
■CROATIA
Professors, official detained
Police detained almost 100 people, including the country’s top anti-corruption official and 21 university professors, in what reports yesterday described as the country’s largest-ever crackdown on graft. About 300 officers raided more than 100 homes, offices and cars on Thursday in an operation targeting corrupt teachers selling university diplomas. Teachers were allegedly charging the equivalent of US$13,000 to enroll students who failed to qualify, then US$600 to US$3,000 to squeeze them through exams.
■SPAIN
Basque party banned
The Supreme Court has banned a Basque nationalist party. The court outlawed the Communist Party of the Basque Lands on the grounds that it is a tool of Batasuna, the banned political wing of the armed separatist organization ETA. The move announced on Thursday night means the government will shut down the party’s offices and seize its assets. The nine party members who hold seats in the Basque regional parliament will retain them, but be stripped of their party affiliation. Earlier this week the court outlawed another Basque party and an advocacy group for jailed ETA members.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Blair nervous about Yale
Former prime minister Tony Blair said he was “a bit nervous” about starting a teaching post yesterday at Yale University in the US. “I’m sort of a bit nervous for it, really,” he told the Yale Daily News. “I was never a star student and I’m coming along mixing with a whole lot of people who I’m sure are a whole lot more clever and smarter than I am.” At Yale, Blair is to lead a semester-long “faith and globalization” seminar. The course is to explore the issues concerning the public roles of religious faiths in the context of globalization. Hundreds of students applied to take it, the paper said. Blair is the representative of the Middle East Quartet of mediators — consisting of the US, Russia, the UN and the EU.
■UNITED STATES
Disney gives free tickets
Walt Disney Co said on Thursday its US parks will offer free tickets to parkgoers on their birthdays next year to capitalize on a consumer trend for marking important life events with vacations. The Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resorts will also offer new park experiences geared to the celebration theme, including street parties, video dance parties and barbecues, the company said. Holders of annual passes can receive other incentives, such as FastPass tickets for rides, which cut down the time spent waiting in lines, or a “birthday fun card” of a value equivalent to a free admission ticket.
■BRAZIL
Da Silva supports gay union
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has come out in favor of same-sex unions. Lula says that, “there are men living with men, and women living with women” who “build a good life together.” But a proposed law that would give all same-sex couples rights equal to those enjoyed by married heterosexuals has been stalled in Congress for more than a decade. Lula said in an interview aired late on Wednesday night by the government-run TV Brasil that politicians who oppose same-sex unions and yet seek the votes of gay men and women during elections are “hypocrites.”
■MEXICO
Prison riot claims 20
More than 20 inmates died and several dozen were wounded in riots in an overcrowded prison in Tijuana this week, police said on Thursday. Violence first broke out on Sunday during family visiting hours in the La Mesa jail after a prisoner died inside, apparently abused by guards, a human rights inspector said. Four inmates died in the clashes and another 19 were killed in new rioting on Wednesday. Police said the prisoners used firearms, but no security officials died in the clashes. The jail, built for around 3,000 people, was packed with more than 8,000, and family members claimed prisoners lived in dire conditions.
■CANADA
Astronomers misguided
Astronomers searching for solar systems capable of supporting life may be looking in the wrong places, says a new study that suggests our sun is far from its origins in the galaxy. Researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle, the University of Central Lancashire in Britain and Hamilton, and McMaster University in Ontario built a computer model that simulated the movement of stars within the Milky Way over 9 billion years. The simulation, which took 100,000 hours of computer time to run, found that stars do not remain in the same orbit around a galaxy’s center, as was believed, but instead migrate from the center to its spiral arms or outer reaches. Therefore, astronomers who rely on the position of our sun in their search for regions of the galaxy where life exists must broaden their search.
■GERMANY
US soldier pleads guilty
A US soldier who admitted involvement in the shooting of detainees in Iraq early last year has been sentenced to seven months in jail and will be dishonorably discharged, the army said on Thursday after a court martial at a base in Grafenwoehr. Specialist Belmor Ramos, 23, pleaded guilty at a court martial to charges of conspiracy to commit premeditated murder. He agreed to testify in the trials of other soldiers involved, the army said in a statement. Ramos was present when four unarmed, handcuffed and blindfolded Iraqi detainees were allegedly shot dead in Baghdad in March or April last year.
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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