■INDONESIA
Man killed by dragons
Police and witnesses said two Komodo dragons killed a man picking fruit in the eastern part of the country — the latest in a string of attacks on humans. Police Sergeant Kosmas Jalang said yesterday the mauling on Komodo, one of three islands where the world’s largest lizard is found in the wild, occurred minutes after 31-year-old Muhamad Anwar fell out of a sugar-apple tree. The man’s neighbor, Theresia Tawa, said he was bleeding badly from bites to his hands, body, legs and neck by two lizards on Monday and died at a clinic on the neighboring island of Flores.
■PHILIPPINES
Government slams report
Manila criticized yesterday a report from a New York-based media watchdog listing the Southeast Asian country as among the world’s most dangerous places for journalists because of many unresolved murders since 1998. About 24 killings of Philippine journalists have remained unresolved since 1998, said the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), calling on the government to prosecute and punish those behind the murders. In its latest Impunity Index report, the CPJ ranked the Philippines as No. 6 in a list of 14 countries across the globe with high numbers of unresolved killings of journalists against the size of the population. The government denied it has ignored the killings.
■CHINA
Thousands ill with HFMD
Thousands of children in eastern and central parts of the country have been sickened with hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD), a highly contagious illness that is sometimes fatal, the government and state press said yesterday. Two children died of the disease, also known as enterovirus, over the weekend in Heze, Shandong Province, the provincial medical department said on its Web site. The Beijing News paper said tests on the causes of another four recent infant deaths in and around Heze were still being confirmed by doctors.
■THAILAND
‘Spider-Man’ saves child
A fireman turned superhero when he dressed up as comic-book character Spider-Man to coax a frightened eight-year-old from a balcony, police said yesterday. Teachers at a special needs school in Bangkok alerted authorities on Monday when an autistic pupil, scared of attending his first day at school, sat out on the third-floor ledge and refused to come inside, a police sergeant said. Despite teachers’ efforts to beckon the boy inside, he refused to budge until his mother mentioned her son’s love of superheroes, prompting fireman Sonchai Yoosabai to take a novel approach to the problem. The rescuer dashed back to his fire station and made a quick change into a Spider-Man costume before returning to the boy. The young boy immediately stood up and walked into his rescuer’s arms, police said.
■JAPAN
Opposition chief could resign
An aide to opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa was charged yesterday with violating a political funds law, setting the stage for Ozawa to decide whether to resign ahead of an election this year. Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura confirmed media reports of the indictment at a news conference. Before the scandal broke, voters’ frustrations with unpopular Prime Minister Taro Aso had boosted the chances Ozawa would lead his Democratic Party to victory in an election that must be held by October. An opposition victory would end more than 50 years of nearly unbroken rule by the Liberal Democratic Party.
■FRANCE
Nuke test victims awarded
The government will pay out at least 10 million euros (US$13.62 million) to people with health problems as a result of nuclear tests carried out in the Algerian Sahara and in Polynesia, Defense Minister Herve Morin was quoted as saying yesterday. Between 1960 and 1966, the government carried out more than 200 atmospheric nuclear tests, 17 of them in the Algerian Sahara and 193 in French Polynesia. The individual cases will be examined by an independent commission comprised of physicians and headed by a magistrate, Morin said. Contrary to past decision, those demanding compensation will no longer have to prove a causal link between the radiation and their illness.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Two teens charged with plot
Two teens have been charged with plotting to bomb a school on the 10th anniversary of the Columbine High School killings in Colorado, prosecutors said on Monday. A 16-year-old and a 17-year-old had a plan to strike on April 20, the Crown Prosecution Service said. The date marks 10 years since students Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, opened fire at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, killing 13 people before committing suicide in the school’s library.
■RUSSIA
Critic doused with ammonia
Police were investigating claims on Monday after a Kremlin critic running for mayor of the city hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics said he was doused with ammonia in an attack he blamed on the government. Boris Nemtsov told Ekho Moskvy radio he suspected Kremlin-backed activists carried out the attack on Monday in response to his criticism of Russia’s plans for the Winter Games in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi. A Kremlin spokesman declined to comment on the allegation. The incident coincided with the publication of an open letter to President Dmitry Medvedev in which Nemtsov said preparations for the Olympics would strain Sochi to the breaking point and suggested many events be held elsewhere in Russia.
■NETHERLANDS
Judges convict Hutu rebel
A Hutu man was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison on Monday for the slaying of two Tutsi mothers and at least four of their children during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The Hague District Court acquitted Joseph Mpambara of involvement in the massacre of hundreds of other Tutsis who had sought shelter in a church. He was also acquitted of raping four women and killing one of them in a separate incident. The judges said there was compelling evidence that Mpambara ordered the two Tutsi mothers and their children hauled out of an ambulance they were using to flee violence, and then killed. They were bludgeoned and hacked with clubs and machetes.
■ISRAEL
Parents visit protester son
The parents of an American man severely wounded by troops during a West Bank protest have asked police to launch an investigation, their lawyer said on Monday. Tristan Anderson, 38, from Oakland, California, was struck in the head by a tear gas canister fired by members of the paramilitary border police in the Palestinian village of Naalin on March 13. Anderson had joined a protest against Israel’s separation barrier, which cuts off Naalin from olive groves. In the past year, four Palestinians were killed in Naalin by Israeli troops quelling weekly stone-throwing protests against the barrier, according to Israeli human rights group B’tselem.
■CANADA
Minister defends seal hunt
Officials defended the start of the annual seal hunt on Monday as a financial necessity for isolated communities as sealers faced pressure from a possible EU ban. Animal rights groups say the hunt is cruel, difficult to monitor and ravages the seal population. But sealers and Canada’s Fisheries Department says the hunt is sustainable and humane, and earns money for isolated fishing communities in Atlantic Canada. “The picture that has been painted in people’s minds is that we have small white coat baby seals that are being clubbed over the head and skinned while they are alive. It’s just so not true,” Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Gail Shea said in a telephone interview.
■UNITED STATES
Plath’s son commits suicide
The son of the poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes has committed suicide 46 years after his mother gassed herself, his sister and police said on Monday. Nicholas Hughes, 47, hanged himself at his home in Alaska, Frieda Hughes, who is also a poet, told Britain’s Times newspaper. Plath, an American famous for her autobiographical novel The Bell Jar and the poetry collection Ariel, has been at the center of a literary cult since she committed suicide in 1963 at the age of 30 while her children, one-year-old Nicholas and two-year-old Frieda, slept. Ted Hughes’ lover Assia Wevill also committed suicide in 1969, at the same time killing her young daughter from her relationship with the poet.
■UNITED STATES
Obama meets Gorbachev
The White House said on Monday that President Barack Obama met former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev last week as the US and Russia intensify efforts to “reset” strained relations. Gorbachev was at a White House meeting with Vice President Joe Biden on Friday when Obama informally dropped by, his spokesman Robert Gibbs said. The announcement comes just over a week before Obama meets Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in London. “The president tends to roam around the larger house and sometimes walks into meetings that weren’t previously on his schedule,” Gibbs said.
■UNITED STATES
Court debates ‘Hillary’ movie
Was Hillary: The Movie an anti-Hillary Clinton documentary or a 90-minute attack ad? The Supreme Court was trying to figure it out yesterday as it heard arguments over whether a political movie and its accompanying advertisements should be regulated the same way as political ads during election seasons. Citizens United, a conservative group, wanted to pay for Hillary — a documentary filled with negative criticism of the former New York senator — to be shown on home video-on-demand while she was competing against Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. But federal judges said the movie was equivalent to a political ad.
■UNITED STATES
‘Jane Doe’ finally identified
A mute elderly woman known only as “Jane Doe” since she was found wandering in a mall in New Jersey 15 years ago has finally been identified. Lieutenant Eduardo Ojeda of the New Jersey Department of Human Services police discovered recently that the woman is Colombian-born Elba Leonor Diaz Soccarras, who turns 75 on March 28. She has Alzheimer’s disease and has been bedridden in a New Jersey psychiatric hospital for years. Her identity, partly obscured because she and her daughter had a falling out, was established thanks to tips from the public and Colombian officials.
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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