■ 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.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
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