■ AFGHANISTAN
Bomb kills four policemen
A suicide bomb killed at least four policemen yesterday in the southern city of Kandahar, local police said. The escalation of violence this year, the bloodiest period since the Taliban was ousted in 2001, has raised fears about the prospects of stability in the country despite an increasing number of foreign troops. A witness at the scene said the attacker detonated his device in front of the Chinese hospital in the capital of Kandahar Province. Removed from power in 2001, the Taliban largely rely on suicide and roadside bomb attacks as part of their campaign to topple the Western-backed government and drive out foreign troops under the command of NATO and the US military.
■ CHINA
Police simulate attack
Beijing has carried out anti-terrorist drills simulating the deadly assault on India’s financial center of Mumbai late last month, state press said yesterday. The Beijing Special Armed Police Unit engaged in a mock hostage rescue on Saturday at a hotel using a helicopter, anti-terrorist vehicles and a wide array of weapons, Xinhua news agency said. “The drill was aimed at preventing terrorist attacks, especially after the Mumbai attack, which had definite targets and a careful plan,” it quoted Xiao Yong (肖勇), head of Beijing’s anti-terrorist unit, as saying. “We noticed that the terrorists attacked different sites of the city in different ways.” The exercises were the first anti-terrorism training in the capital since the Beijing Olympics in August, state press reports said. National police chief Meng Jianzhu (孟建柱) said last week the fight against terrorism should be “serious.” Meng said that the main terrorist threat remained from Muslim Uighurs seeking independence in Xinjiang.■ MALAYSIA
Arrests follow trailer crash
Police arrested two men after the trailer that they had hijacked crashed as they attempted a hasty escape, news reports said yesterday. The suspects had allegedly pulled up beside the trailer in a van on Saturday in Kuala Lumpur and threatened the driver and his assistant with machetes after they had stopped by the roadside to relieve themselves. The suspects then drove off with the trailer, laden with soap-making materials the Star newspaper reported. Police spotted the stolen vehicle and followed it in hot pursuit, a police spokesman said. After being chased the hijackers lost control of the vehicle and crashed into three cars and a signpost before the trailer came to rest on its side.
■ NEPAL
UNIM extension sought
Authorities have formally requested the extension of the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) for another six months, media reports said yesterday. The term of UNMIN, set up by the UN to support the peace process in the country, is due to end on Jan. 23. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will present the request with his recommendations to the Security Council next month, and the term was likely to be extended, the Kathmandu Post newspaper said.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Rapist’s parents punished
A court has ordered the parents of a teen convicted of rape to pay a fine of more than US$60,000 for neglecting their duty to supervise their son, a report said yesterday. Yonhap news agency said the Seoul court had fined the parents 83 million won (US$60,300) for failing to take proper care of their 18-year-old son, who raped a seven-year-old girl from his neighbourhood in 2006. The court said that the parents should have kept closer watch on the activities of the teenager, who apparently committed the crime to copy a scene he had witnessed in a porn movie, the report said. “The parents could have prevented the crime with appropriate education but failed to show enough attention to their child,” the court said in its ruling. “They neglected their duty to raise their child so that he can properly adjust to society.” The teenager was sentenced to 10 years in jail.
■ HONG KONG
Gay march attracts thousand
Around 1,000 people took part in the territory’s first gay pride march, organizers said yesterday. Gay, lesbian and bisexual marchers from China and Taiwan joined local groups for Saturday’s event. It was the first event of its kind in the territory.■ TUNISIA
Al Nadha leader rearrested
The former head of a banned Islamist organization who spent 18 years behind bars was jailed again on Saturday for trying to revive its activities, his lawyer and an official source said. Sadok Chourou was freed early last month after the government pardoned 21 members of the Al Nahdha movement to mark 21 years since President Zine al Abidine Ben Ali came to power. Human rights groups said Chourou was rearrested on Dec. 3. “Investigations showed that the accused had been reviving the activities of the outlawed organization and intensifying contacts with its members,” the official source said. Chourou denied any attempt to revive the group’s activities, but was handed a one-year prison term by a court in Tunis. “This is a harsh verdict given the absence of proof,” his lawyer Samir Ben Amor said.
■ SUDAN
Troop withdrawal announced
Troops will withdraw from the oil town Abyei in the central part of the country after two policemen were killed in clashes with soldiers, a local government official said on Saturday. Dozens of residents have fled the town after a dispute between policemen and a joint-patrol of the north Sudanese army and former southern rebel group Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) turned deadly on Friday, leaving two policemen dead. “The local government has decided to withdraw the joint-forces by next morning to avoid further friction with police,” said Arop Moyak, head of Abyei’s interim administration. He did not say whether the withdrawal would be temporary. The disputed town was the site of intense fighting in May, in which the army destroyed almost half the town in clashes with the SPLA, displacing about 60,000 residents from their homes.
■ YEMEN
Roads deadly during Id
At least 88 people were killed and 582 others injured in traffic accidents over the Muslim Id al-Adha festival, police said on Saturday. The traffic police said in a statement the Arab country’s roads witnessed 360 accidents during the period from Dec. 4 through Friday. The figure is nearly double the number of fatalities during the Id al-Fitr festivities two months ago, when 48 people died in road accidents nationwide. Excessive speed, recklessness and chewing the mild stimulant drug of qat by drivers, were to blame for those accidents, the statement said. Traffic accidents claim the lives of about 3,000 people in the country every year, official figures showed. In the first eight months this year, 1,477 people were killed and 9,879 injured in accidents across the country.
■ FRANCE
Ambassador snubs Kouchner
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki failed to turn up for lunch with his French counterpart on Saturday, a diplomat said, in what could be Iran’s latest protest over tough rhetoric by Paris toward Tehran. Mottaki was scheduled to meet Bernard Kouchner before yesterday’s international talks on Afghanistan, but gave no reason for not attending the lunch meeting. “The meeting was cancelled,” the French diplomat said. Iran summoned the French ambassador to protest what it said were “inappropriate remarks” by President Nicolas Sarkozy, Iranian state media reported on Thursday. Sarkozy, a critic of Iran since coming to office last year, said on Monday he could not shake hands with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for saying Israel should be “wiped off the map.”■ UNITED STATES
Pizza man fights with pie
Florida police say a pizza delivery man fought back with the one weapon he had handy when a gun was pulled on him in a stickup: a large, hot pepperoni pie. Delivery man Eric Lopez Devictoria, 40, flung the steaming pizza at the gunman, buying time as he ran for safety, police told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. At least one shot was fired as Devictoria fled, but the deliveryman wasn’t hurt and was able to quickly call police, authorities said. Three teenage suspects were nabbed soon after the run-in on Wednesday, police said, adding that they were charged with armed robbery.
■ UNITED STATES
Cop killer suspects arrested
Los Angeles police say two men have been arrested in the fatal shooting of a sheriff’s deputy who died as he was getting ready to go to work. Police say 20-year-old Guillermo Hernandez and 24-year-old Carlos Velasquez, both of Los Angeles, were arrested on murder charges on Friday night. They are being held without bail. The president of the Los Angeles police union says both men were gang members. A police spokesman would not confirm that. Juan Escalante was shot dead outside his parents’ home on Aug. 2. He died from a gunshot wound to the head. Investigators are considering the possibility that the 27-year-old officer was targeted because of his work. It wasn’t immediately known if the suspects had attorneys.
■ UNITED STATES
Court lets murderer live
A court in Atlanta sentenced a convicted murderer on Saturday to life in prison for killing a judge in a courtroom and three other people in a stunning escape from custody, prosecutors said. Brian Nichols was widely expected to receive the death penalty for a series of murders committed in March 2005 that gained instant notoriety and sparked a huge police and FBI manhunt. He was convicted last month. But after several days of deliberation this week, the jury was deadlocked nine to three on whether Nichols, 37, should receive life without parole or execution by lethal injection. Under Georgia law, only a unanimous jury can lead to the death penalty. While being prepared for a court hearing on a rape charge in 2005, Nichols overpowered a security guard at Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta, took her gun and entered the courtroom where he shot dead Judge Rowland Barnes and a court reporter in front of several witnesses. During his escape, he killed a deputy sheriff outside the court. In the manhunt that followed, Nichols killed a federal agent, hijacked several cars and held a woman hostage in her home north of Atlanta before giving himself up.
■ UNITED STATES
Palin’s church set on fire
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s home church was badly damaged by arson, leading the governor to apologize if the fire was connected to “undeserved negative attention” from her failed campaign as the Republican vice presidential nominee. Damage to the Wasilla Bible Church was estimated at US$1 million, authorities said on Saturday. No one was injured in the fire, which was set on Friday night while a handful of people, including two children, were inside, Fire Chief James Steele said. He said the blaze was being investigated as an arson but didn’t know of any recent threats to the church. Authorities didn’t know whether Palin’s connection to the church was relevant to the fire, Steele said. Palin, who was not at the church at the time of the fire, stopped by Saturday.
Indonesia was to sign an agreement to repatriate two British nationals, including a grandmother languishing on death row for drug-related crimes, an Indonesian government source said yesterday. “The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed,” the source said, identifying Lindsay Sandiford and 35-year-old Shahab Shahabadi as the people being transferred. Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated US$2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner yesterday signed a coalition deal, paving the way for Sanae Takaichi to become the nation’s first female prime minister. The 11th-hour agreement with the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) came just a day before the lower house was due to vote on Takaichi’s appointment as the fifth prime minister in as many years. If she wins, she will take office the same day. “I’m very much looking forward to working with you on efforts to make Japan’s economy stronger, and to reshape Japan as a country that can be responsible for future generations,”
SEVEN-MINUTE HEIST: The masked thieves stole nine pieces of 19th-century jewelry, including a crown, which they dropped and damaged as they made their escape The hunt was on yesterday for the band of thieves who stole eight priceless royal pieces of jewelry from the Louvre Museum in the heart of Paris in broad daylight. Officials said a team of 60 investigators was working on the theory that the raid was planned and executed by an organized crime group. The heist reignited a row over a lack of security in France’s museums, with French Minister of Justice yesterday admitting to security flaws in protecting the Louvre. “What is certain is that we have failed, since people were able to park a furniture hoist in the middle of
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