■ CHINA
Man throws mom in river
A 28-year-old migrant worker has been detained for throwing his dead mother’s body into a river because he couldn’t afford a funeral, state media reported yesterday. The elderly woman, who lived with her son in a rented apartment, was often sick, and she died on Nov. 3, the Beijing News reported. Her son, surnamed Wang, packed the body in a bag and threw it into a river with the help of a friend. After two weeks, the bag was eventually discovered, and the body traced back to Wang, who was detained along with his accomplice.
■ CHINA
Cabbies strike in Chaozhou
About 300 taxi drivers went on strike in Chaozhou, Guangdong Province, smashing cars and demanding a crackdown on unlicensed taxis in the latest protest against illegal taxi competition. Hundreds of cab drivers gathered on Saturday in front of government buildings, said a city official yesterday. More than 200 taxis were parked in front of the gate of a government office as drivers sought greater enforcement against unlicensed taxis, the Xinhua news agency reported.
■ MALAYSIA
Police find drugs in vehicles
Police found drugs worth more than 800,000 ringgit (US$232,000) while investigating a three-vehicle accident, a news report said yesterday. Some 14kg of heroin and 1kg of ketamine were discovered inside one car involved in the crash. On Saturday afternoon, a tourist bus driver lost control of his vehicle on a major expressway in the northern state of Perak and crashed into two cars. The suspected drug trafficker and driver of the second car were reportedly injured and taken to a local hospital for treatment. Police said the man would be arrested and charged with drug possession and trafficking.
■ NEW ZEALAND
Air force to track whalers
The air force is to track the Japanese whaling fleet in Antarctic waters this season, Defense Minister Wayne Mapp said yesterday. The Japanese fleet set sail last month and the Sea Shepherd activists, who have vowed to stop the whaling, are sending their vessel, the Steve Irwin, into the area. In a joint statement, Mapp and Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully said they did not want the situation to get out of hand. “Both sides need to be fully aware of the dangers, and act responsibly,” McCully said.
■ INDIA
Actor recalls Mumbai siege
A British actor who played one of the London suicide bombers in a TV documentary escaped death at the hands of terrorists in the Mumbai massacre. Actor Joey Jeetun, 31, who played suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer in a British television documentary 7/7: Attack on London, was in Cafe Leopold, an expat and tourist haunt near the Taj Mahal Hotel when attackers stormed both venues and other key targets on Wednesday. Jeetun told reporters how he survived the attack after terrorists assumed that he was dead because he was covered in other people’s blood.
■ BANGLADESH
Activists attack sculptures
Police in Dhaka arrested eight Islamists after they attacked a sculpture depicting a group of white storks, in a continuing campaign against artwork they say is forbidden by Islam. Witnesses said nearly 400 Ulama Anjumane Al-Baiyanat activists attacked the sculptures with shovels and hammers, chanting slogans calling for the demolition of all stoneworks, which some hardline Islamists consider to be idols.
■ SWITZERLAND
Swiss vote on heroin
Voters were deciding yesterday whether to make permanent a pioneering program to give hardened addicts heroin. Public opinion surveys leading up to the referendum indicated strong support for the program, which has been credited with reducing crime and improving the health and daily lives of addicts since it began 14 years ago. Parliament has already approved the measure, but under the countries cherished direct democracy the voters will have the last word in the referendum prompted by a challenge from conservatives.
■ IRAN
Three sentenced to hang
The Revolutionary Court has convicted three men of involvement in a bombing inside a packed mosque that killed 14 people in April and sentenced them to be hanged publicly near the scene of the attack. The court said on Saturday it also found the three men guilty of having links to the US with orders to destabilize the country through a campaign of bombings and assassinations. It said they had confessed. “The accused, who stood trial on Nov. 22, were sentenced to be hanged. Given the depth of the tragedy in the terrorist operation, it is necessary to carry out the verdicts in public next to the venue of the mosque,” the court statement said.
■ FRANCE
Black box recovered
One of the black boxes of an Air New Zealand Airbus A320 that crashed off the coast has been recovered, an official said on Saturday. Deputy prosecutor Dominique Alzeari told reporters that the flight data was being analyzed and the results would be available within the next two days. “The first results will be known within 48 hours, the conversations that took place in the flight’s last minutes will give some indication as to the cause of the crash,” he said, adding that it would be “premature” to draw any conclusions now. The plane went to France for tests and maintenance work before heading to Frankfurt in Germany from where it was scheduled to leave for New Zealand on Friday. It crashed on Thursday with five New Zealanders and two German pilots.
■ BULGARIA
Scientists find ancient canoe
A well-preserved ancient wooden dugout canoe has been discovered at the bottom of the Black Sea, scientists said on Saturday. The vessel was discovered by fishermen trailing nets along the sea bottom some 24km off the coast, said Dimitar Nedkov, head of the Archaeological Museum in the port city of Sozopol. “The dugout is 2.6m long and 70cm wide, and it is made most probably of oak,” Nedkov said. Explorers have found four ancient vessels in remarkably good condition in the Black Sea, whose oxygen-depleted deep water preserves wrecks without the worm damage and deterioration that normally affects wooden vessels.
■ GERMANY
Prussian palace to be rebuilt
A jury of artists, politicians and city planners voted in favor of the reconstruction of a Prussian palace in Berlin on Friday, just as the last remnants of the East German parliament building on the site were dragged away. But the plan to reinstate the last home of Kaiser Wilhelm II has been disputed between those who wanted a new centerpiece for east Berlin and those nostalgic for the communist-era palace where they celebrated coming of age parties or went bowling. Yesterday an Italian architectural firm, Francesco Stella, beat 39 other architects to win the contract to design the 18th century Prussian palace, which was destroyed by World War II bombing.
■ IRAQ
Mass grave found
A mass grave containing the bodies of 33 men, women and children has been found in a former Sunni insurgent stronghold north of Baghdad, officials said. Amer Riffat of the Diyala provincial council said the bodies were discovered on Saturday near Khalis. A police officer said the bodies showed signs of being blindfolded and shot. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter. Police said they believed the victims were killed by al-Qaeda in Iraq militants who wielded sway in the area before a recent downturn in violence.
■ UNITED STATES
Pair shares first kiss at altar
Won’t kiss on the first date? How about waiting until marriage? Chicagoans Melody LaLuz, 28, and Claudaniel Fabien, 30, shared their first kiss on Saturday at the altar. The two teach abstinence at the city’s public schools and practiced what they preached to their teenage students. The Chicago Tribune reported that the couple had never kissed and that they had never been alone together in a house. A friend of LaLuz said wedding guests cheered and stomped during the two-minute smooch. LaLuz and Fabien said they have no worries about how they would spend their honeymoon in the Bahamas.
■ UNITED STATES
Plea deal offered to boy
Prosecutors have offered a plea deal to an eight-year-old boy charged with murder in the shooting deaths of his father and another man in their eastern Arizona home. Complete details of the offer weren’t spelled out in a court filing posted on Saturday on the Apache County Superior Court’s Web site. But County Attorney Criss Candelaria wrote that he had “tendered a plea offer to the juvenile’s attorneys that would resolve all the charges in the juvenile court contingent on the results of the mental health evaluations.” Candelaria was responding to a defense motion seeking to block him from dropping one of two first-degree murder charges the boy faces in the deaths of his father, Vincent Romero, 29, and Timothy Romans, 39.
■ BRAZIL
Flood death toll hits 110
At least 110 people have died in flooding and subsequent landslides in the southern state of Santa Catarina, the state news agency said on Saturday. An estimated 80,000 have been evacuated from the area. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who freed up more than US$850 million for reconstruction and support for the victims, said the disaster was the worst he had ever seen in the country, as he flew by helicopter over the towns that were devastated, state-run Agencia Brasil reported.
■ PERU
Official’s Chile trip canceled
Defense Minister Antero Flores-Araoz said on Saturday he canceled a trip to Chile after Peru’s army chief was shown making anti-Chilean statements online. Edwin Donayre was discovered on YouTube this week saying that Chileans should not be allowed into the country and that if they did enter they would have to leave in “boxes” and “plastic bags.” The statements apparently were made months ago at a private meeting. They caused an uproar in both countries. “I have conferred with the foreign minister and as per his recommendations I have decided not to travel to Chile for the moment and will await another time,” Flores-Araoz said.
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland on Tuesday expressed concern about “the political crisis” in Georgia, two days after Mikheil Kavelashvili was formally inaugurated as president of the South Caucasus nation, cementing the ruling party’s grip in what the opposition calls a blow to the country’s EU aspirations and a victory for former imperial ruler Russia. “We strongly condemn last week’s violence against peaceful protesters, media and opposition leaders, and recall Georgian authorities’ responsibility to respect human rights and protect fundamental freedoms, including the freedom to assembly and media freedom,” the three ministers wrote in a joint statement. In reaction
BARRIER BLAME: An aviation expert questioned the location of a solid wall past the end of the runway, saying that it was ‘very bad luck for this particular airplane’ A team of US investigators, including representatives from Boeing, on Tuesday examined the site of a plane crash that killed 179 people in South Korea, while authorities were conducting safety inspections on all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by the country’s airlines. All but two of the 181 people aboard the Boeing 737-800 operated by South Korean budget airline Jeju Air died in Sunday’s crash. Video showed the aircraft, without its landing gear deployed, crash-landed on its belly and overshoot a runaway at Muan International Airport before it slammed into a barrier and burst into flames. The plane was seen having engine trouble.
REVELRY ON HOLD: Students marched in Belgrade amid New Year’s events, saying that ‘there is nothing to celebrate’ after the train station tragedy killed 15 Thousands of students marched in Belgrade and two other Serbian cities during a New Year’s Eve protest that went into yesterday, demanding accountability over the fatal collapse of a train station roof in November. The incident in the city of Novi Sad occurred on Nov. 1 at a newly renovated train facility, killing 14 people — aged six to 74 — at the scene, while a 15th person died in hospital weeks later. Public outrage over the tragedy has sparked nationwide protests, with many blaming the deaths on corruption and inadequate oversight of construction projects. In Belgrade, university students marched through the capital
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