■VIETNAM
Paracel ‘president’ named
The nation yesterday named a “president” for the government body overseeing the disputed Paracel islands, which are occupied by China, an official and press reports said. “It’s a matter of the sacred earth of the homeland ... and we are going to continue our struggle to defend the integrity and the maritime sovereignty of the islands,” Dang Cong Ngu was quoted as saying by the VNExpress news Web site. China has administered the islands, also claimed by Taiwan, since 1974 when its troops overran a South Vietnamese outpost shortly before the end of the Vietnam War. Ngu was named president of the Paracel district People’s Committee at a ceremony in central Danang, a civic official in the city said.
■INDIA
Rahul Gandhi: No to PM
Rahul Gandhi, scion of the country’s most powerful family dynasty and touted as a future prime minister, yesterday said he would refuse to accept the top job if it was offered to him after the general elections. The 38-year-old Gandhi, whose father, grandmother and great grandfather were all prime ministers, is backed by some senior Congress leaders and millions of supporters to take over the top job, replacing current Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. “I would refuse to be [the prime minister],” Gandhi told reporters in Calcutta, adding that he was not shirking any responsibility by saying no. “I don’t have the experience.” The country is holding a month-long election process, staggered over five stages, with experts saying the result, which will be known on May 16, could produce a weak coalition.
■AUSTRALIA
Refugee boat captured
Local authorities yesterday intercepted a boat carrying 54 illegal immigrants near Ashmore Reef off the north coast. It was the eighth refugee boat to arrive so far this year, one more than the tally for the whole of last year. The 54 asylum seekers and two crew members were stopped 900km from Darwin and taken aboard the patrol boat HMAS Albany. They are being transported to Christmas Island for processing. On Wednesday 32 Sri Lankan migrants arrived off the west coast. The week before that there was an explosion aboard an Indonesian fishing vessel carrying mostly Afghan immigrants off the west coast in which five people died and dozens were injured. The wooden boat carrying 47 refugees and two Indonesian crew members went up in flames while being escorted to Christmas Island by a navy vessel.
■HONG KONG
Students oust union chief
Students at a leading Hong Kong university voted to oust its union president for controversial remarks on China’s bloody crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy protests. The poll result released yesterday signifies that the crackdown remains a sensitive issue in the territory, where sympathy ran high for the demonstrators. In a series of activities to mark the 20th anniversary of the uprising, the president of University of Hong Kong’s student union, Ayo Chan, drew criticism from students for saying the military crackdown in Beijing could have been avoided had protesters dispersed peacefully. Local media also quoted Chan, a 20-year-old social sciences student, as saying that some protesters were “runaway student leaders.” Among 2,668 students who voted in the three-day poll, 1,592 voted for the removal of Chan — well above the required 10 percent of students needed to oust the union president. Some 949 voted against.
■SPAIN
PM defends Sarkozy
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said on Friday he had “no problem” with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, dismissing reports that the French leader had questioned his intelligence. “I have very good relations with Nicolas Sarkozy and I know that any comment he may have made about me would be positive,” Zapatero said, in an interview with the French daily Le Monde. Last week, Sarkozy was forced to deny reports he had disparaged Zapatero at a lunch meeting with French lawmakers, during a playful attack on his French Socialist opposition. “Perhaps he’s not very clever but I know people who were very clever and who didn’t make the second round of the presidential election,” sources quoted Sarkozy as saying of Zapatero.
■GERMANY
Bomb causes evacuation
Police say a World War II bomb uncovered during construction at the Neues Museum in central Berlin has caused evacuations and traffic jams. Police would not confirm reports that the apartment of Chancellor Angela Merkel, who lives nearby, needed to be evacuated. A Berlin police statement said the 100kg unexploded bomb appeared to be a type used by the Russians during the war.
■GERMANY
Abandoned kids return
Three young children — abandoned in an Italian pizzeria after their mother and her companion ran out of cash — arrived home on Friday in Germany, where they have been made wards of court, authorities in the district of Olpe said. Two child protection officials from Olpe, east of Cologne, had traveled the day before to Aosta in Italy to pick them up. Authorities said the boys, 10 months and six years old, and the girl, four, were unharmed. The mother, 26, and her male companion, 24, were located in woods near Aosta on Thursday. They said they considered themselves financially unable to care for the children, whose biological father is in prison for a fatal assault on the couple’s fourth child. The mother was released by Italian police, but her new partner, a prison inmate who had failed to return to his German jail from two days’ furlough, remained in Italian custody on Friday.
■ITALY
Quake zone to host G8 talks
G8 partners have welcomed Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s decision to move July’s summit from the Mediterranean island of La Maddalena to the earthquake-hit city of L’Aquila, an Italian official said on Friday. Berlusconi made the surprise announcement on Thursday, saying the change of venue would save money and show solidarity with the people of L’Aquila, where 296 people were killed on April 6.
■GERMANY
Toads sing kara-croak-e
Forget the Eurovision song contest. The most hotly-awaited international music competition of the year takes place in Germany on May 10 — the second annual international toad song contest. Fire-bellied toads from Denmark, Germany, Latvia and Sweden will croak it out for the coveted prize, won last time by Sweden “in the glorious tradition of ABBA,” says the nature protection society in Schleswig-Holstein state. The competitors sound like “church bells underwater” when they break out in song and “sing out of love — like in any good opera,” the society said. In the wild, males enter their own singing contest every spring to attract mates. The competition — to be telecast on the Internet — is to raise awareness of the state’s endangered species.
■UNITED STATES
Mother accused of murder
A woman was arrested on Thursday for allegedly murdering her one-year-old daughter, dumping her body along a highway and telling authorities the child was kidnapped. Stacey Barker, 24, has been under investigation since her toddler was found on March 20 in tall grass a few blocks from a Los Angeles highway. The woman initially reported being knocked out by someone while putting young Emma into her car and waking up to find the child missing. She later recanted the story and claimed the child died in an accident. “Investigators discovered several inconsistencies in her story almost immediately,” said Steve Whitmore, spokesman for the Los Angeles County sheriff’s office.
■UNITED STATES
Israel-bound plane diverted
A Delta Air Lines flight from New York to Tel Aviv, Israel, has been diverted to Boston after an unruly passenger rushed the cockpit. Phil Orlandella, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Port Authority, says the 22-year-old Israeli man ran toward the cockpit and pounded on the door. He says passengers and crew helped to subdue the man. The passengers were being held in Boston as investigators interview them and check their luggage. No other flights have been affected. Anthony Black, a spokesman for Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines Inc, said Flight 86 had 206 passengers and 11 crew members aboard when it landed Friday night at Logan Airport. The plane had left New York about two hours earlier.
■MEXICO
Nine bodies found at resort
The bullet-riddled bodies of nine men have been found in and around the Mexican resort of Acapulco. Guerrero state police said in a statement that the bodies of five men were found in a sport utility vehicle parked near a highway connecting Acapulco and Zihuatenejo. The men had their hands and feet bound. In Acapulco, another man was found shot twice in the head. Three other bodies were located outside the city. Two of the victims were found in an empty lot in Coyuca de Catalan. The third victim was found shot to death in Ayutla de los Libres. All were found on Friday.
■COLOMBIA
FARC suspect arrested
Venezuelan authorities deported to Colombia a man believed to be a member of its largest guerrilla group, officials said on Friday. The man, Yeiner Esneider Acosta Pena, was deported on Thursday night, telling authorities that he wanted to leave his rebel group, said Henry Corredor, director of the DAS state security agency in the Guajira region. A suspected member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Acosta was arrested for possessing a false Venezuelan identification card, said Odalis Caldera, public security director in Venezuela’s western Zulia state.
■VENEZUELA
Seven bodies found at base
The bodies of seven people, including three children, have been found in an apartment on a military base. The attorney general’s office said in a statement on Friday that police found the bodies of a sergeant, his wife and three children — ages 12, seven and three — along with two neighbors: another sergeant and the woman he lived with. It said a letter was found in the apartment that appears to explain events leading up to the deaths, but police did not reveal what it said. Investigators have yet to determine what caused the deaths at Fort Tiuna in Caracas. The seven are believed to have died on Wednesday.
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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