■JAPAN
Reports of violence surge
Reported domestic violence surged by 20 percent to a record level of more than 25,000 cases last year, the fifth straight annual rise, police said yesterday. Police handled 25,210 cases of domestic violence by spouses and common-law partners last year — including murders, deadly assaults and rapes — an annual report released by the National Police Agency said. The report said 98.4 percent of the victims were women. Police pressed criminal charges in 1,650 cases, including 77 murders, seven deadly assaults and six rapes, the report said. Police also said 14,657 cases of stalking were reported last year, up 8.9 percent from 2007, and that 90.1 percent of known stalkers were men. Police included verbal threats of physical harm in the statistics for the first time last year.
■MYANMAR
Stimulant tablets seized
A total of 280 drug traffickers were arrested last month and more than 1 million stimulant tablets seized, state media said yesterday, after US reports accusing its military regime of failing to tackle drugs. The New Light of Myanmar newspaper said that police, customs officials and the military had recovered opium, heroin and low-grade opium last month. They seized 1.3 million stimulant tablets as well as chemicals used to make drugs, the newspaper said. The government has vowed that the country will be drug-free by 2014 but it remains the world’s second-largest opium producer after Afghanistan, while the US says the nation has become a hub for amphetamine production. This month the foreign ministry accused the US of giving “inaccurate and politically motivated assessments” in a Feb. 27 global narcotics report that said there had been a significant increase in opium poppy cultivation.
■PHILIPPINES
Police hunt gunmen
President Gloria Arroyo yesterday ordered police to track down and arrest gunmen who ambushed and shot a junior Cabinet member, leaving him critically wounded. Ramon Aquino, an undersecretary with the Department of Public Works and Highways, was on his way to meet Arroyo at the presidential palace on Wednesday when his vehicle was ambushed on a busy Manila street. Aquino is in critical condition after being shot in the chest and abdomen. His driver was also wounded. “The president has directed the PNP [national police] to conduct a thorough investigation,” deputy presidential spokeswoman Lorelei Fajardo said in a statement.
■JAPAN
Doctor sorry for comment
A doctor has apologized after saying that people should smoke themselves to an early death to save the country money on elderly care, his hospital said yesterday. “It is clear that medical costs will increase if non-smoking spreads,” the doctor said last week, according to Ida Hospital in Kawasaki City. “It’s better that people smoke a lot and die early.” The man, whose name has been withheld, made the comment at a gathering of doctors, the hospital said. “The hospital president has reprimanded him severely,” said Tetsuya Yamamoto, a public relations official of the hospital. “He said it was a careless remark and sincerely regrets it,” the official said, adding that he was being sarcastic as the doctor is a smoker himself. The country’s smoking rate is declining. The rate for men is 39.5 percent, half of the rate of 40 years ago, Japan Tobacco Inc said. The rate for women is 12.9 percent, down from 15 percent in 1968.
■BRAZIL
Police kill seven in slum
Police in Rio de Janeiro killed seven people in anti-drug operations in two of the city’s lawless slums on Wednesday, authorities said. Five men were shot dead in the Favela do Aco, a slum in the west of the city. Officers said they were members of a drug gang who opened fire first. They said they seized automatic rifles, a shotgun and pistols. In the northern Morro do Salgueiro slum, anti-drug officers shot dead two suspected criminals. They said gang members fired large-caliber weapons at a police helicopter involved in the operation, without hitting it. Violence is endemic in Rio, where some 1.5 million people live in 980 slums, some of them situated inside popular tourist areas.
■UNITED STATES
Leak delays shuttle launch
The launch of the US space shuttle Discovery was postponed to Sunday at the earliest after NASA found a gas leak in the filling system for its external tank just hours before liftoff. It was yet another frustrating delay for the Discovery and its crew, which has already seen the launch put back four times from its original date of Feb. 12. NASA engineers discovered the leak soon after they began filling the Discovery’s external tank at noon, and the hitch came just hours before the planned 9:20pm launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The leak was found to be coming from a valve regulating the hydrogen pressure, which is located inside the external fuel tank towards the top, communications director Bill Johnson said. After meeting to assess the problem, Leinbach said NASA engineers would not be able reach the leaky valve until today. The external tank, which was three quarters full when the leak was spotted with some 2 million liters of fuel of mostly liquid hydrogen kept at minus 252˚C and liquid oxygen, takes all that time to be emptied.
■UNITED STATES
Accused claims sovereignty
A man accused of driving drunk said Pennsylvania courts have no jurisdiction over him because he’s his own country. After seeing the paperwork that 44-year-old Scott Allan Witmer filed with the court claiming sovereignty, a Northampton County judge said on Tuesday he could not be released from jail until he gets a mental exam. Witmer, who represented himself, said he believed police lacked jurisdiction to pull him over. As he said in court: “I live inside myself, not in Pennsylvania.” He said there was no victim in the crime and asked to go to trial, the Express-Times of Lehigh Valley reported. Defense attorney James Connell, Witmer’s standby counsel, said a challenge to the traffic stop would need to be filed as a pretrial motion.
■AUSTRIA
Morales chews coca leaf
Bolivian President Evo Morales chewed on a coca leaf on Wednesday while calling for it to be removed from a 1961 list of banned narcotics at a UN drugs conference in Vienna. “If it’s a drug, then you should throw me in jail,” said Morales, who is himself a coca producer and has been “a consumer for 10 years.” “Coca leaves are not cocaine, they don’t harm your health, don’t have any psychological effects and aren’t addictive,” he told the 53 member states of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs at the start of a two-day meeting in Vienna. Coca leaves have been cultivated in the Andes mountains for 3,000 years and are part of the culture and identity of the people there, Morales said. He thus called for their removal from the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, while asking that coca paste be added to the list instead.
■UNITED STATES
Student sues over lost Xbox
A Yale University student from Ohio has filed a lawsuit seeking US$1 million from US Airways for a video game console he says was taken from his luggage. Jesse Maiman, 21, alleges that during a flight from New Haven, Connecticut, to Cincinnati in December, his Xbox 360 with a specialized hard drive disappeared from his luggage. Maiman says he got what he called “an unconscionable run-around” from the airline, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported. A US Airways spokeswoman said the airline was unaware of the suit but noted that the government limits liability for lost luggage to US$3,300 per bag.
■UNITED STATES
Free funeral for contractor
A New York City funeral director is offering a deal to die for. Peter Dohanich put an ad on Craigslist seeking a reliable contractor to fix up his apartment in exchange for a full service funeral. Dohanich, who is licensed in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, says he wants a contractor to build a sitting room off the living room of his ground floor apartment. In return, Dohanich says he’ll provide a full funeral, including cremation or burial, embalming, a coffin, viewing, church service and even a hearse or limo for loved ones.
■UNITED STATES
Seattle paper awaits fate
The packing boxes arrived on Wednesday at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (P-I), but its parent company still isn’t saying when its last edition will roll off the presses, or whether the newspaper will live on as an Internet-only venture. “We expect to announce a decision regarding the P-I at some point next week,” Hearst Corp spokesman Paul Luthringer said in a one-line e-mail. Hearst announced on Jan. 9 that because of mounting losses, it was putting the 146-year-old daily up for sale. If no buyer could be found within 60 days — a deadline that passed on Tuesday — Hearst said it would stop printing the paper immediately, possibly go forward with an online-only operation or close the P-I entirely.
■UNITED STATES
Rapper in drug rap
Rapper Coolio was charged on Tuesday with possession of cocaine, which carries a penalty of up to three years of prison, authorities said. Coolio, 45, whose real name is Artis Leon Ivey, was stopped and searched last Friday at Los Angeles International Airport by authorities, who allegedly found cocaine in his luggage, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office said. He was also charged with misdemeanors for allegedly grabbing a screener’s arm to prevent the search and for possession of a smoking device, a spokeswoman for the office said. The rapper is best known for Gangsta’s Paradise, which became the soundtrack of the 1995 film Dangerous Minds.
■UNITED STATES
Lincoln’s watch uncovered
Long-defined by his role guiding the US through its Civil War, Abraham Lincoln even had a pocket watch that bore an inscription about the conflict — although the president likely never saw it. Historians at the Washington-based Smithsonian Institution have uncovered a secret message engraved by a watch repairman 150 years ago inside Lincoln’s timepiece, shortly after his inauguration and the opening salvo of the Civil War. The message notes the April 1861 attack on Fort Sumter, a battle that triggered the bloody north-against-south war. Historians have long suspected that Lincoln’s watch carried a secret message, but it was not until the brass underside of the piece’s movement was revealed that the text became known.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
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