■JAPAN
Opposition head resigns
Opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa, under fire over a political donations scandal, stepped down yesterday ahead of polls that conservative Prime Minister Taro Aso must call by September. Ozawa — head of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) — has been hit hard by the scandal, in which a top aide has been indicted for taking illegal donations from a construction company. “To strengthen our party unity for a victory in the upcoming general elections and for a change of government, I have decided to sacrifice myself and resign as DPJ leader,” Ozawa said. He did not say who could succeed him at the helm of the party.
■MALAYSIA
Alleged gangsters shot dead
Police shot dead five Indonesian men believed to be members of a notorious criminal gang responsible for more than 20 robberies nationwide, a news report said yesterday. Police cornered the five men at a forest reserve in the central state of Selangor late on Sunday and a shootout ensued after the men allegedly tried to attack officers with machetes and a pistol, police chief Khalid Abu Bakar told the official Bernama news agency. The group would take buses to their victim’s houses, tie up the homeowners and leave after taking cash, jewelry and food, Khalid said.
■AUSTRALIA
Asylum seekers intercepted
Australian authorities yesterday intercepted a boat carrying more than 30 suspected asylum seekers, the latest in a string of such vessels stopped in the country’s waters this year. Border agents intercepted the boat 42km north of the Tiwi Islands, off Australia’s northern coast, Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus said in a statement. The 31 passengers and three crew on board were being taken to Christmas Island, an Indian Ocean territory where the government detains and processes refugee applicants. Their nationalities were not immediately known.
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Chinese injured in rampage
Several Chinese staff were injured in a rampage by mine workers who trashed vehicles and equipment at a major nickel project, reports and management said yesterday. The violence on Friday halted construction work at the US$1.37 billion Chinese-run Ramu mine’s Basamuk refinery site in Madang on the northern coast of the Pacific nation. “There was a lot of damage caused with more than 30 vehicles destroyed while workers’ accommodation blocks and plant equipment were extensively damaged,” Ramu NiCo Management Ltd said in a statement. Five Chinese and three locals injured in the fracas were treated at a local hospital. The attack was sparked by a misunderstanding about an earlier industrial accident in which a local worker was injured, a company official said.
■MALDIVES
Dissident leads early polls
The party of the country’s dissident-turned-president has likely won the most seats in the archipelago’s first multiparty legislative elections, but not enough for an outright majority, according to preliminary results cited by a news report. Any result for President Mohamad Nasheed shy of the 39 seats needed for a majority in the 77-seat legislature would mean his administration would have to rely on independent and minor-party lawmakers to pass its legislative agenda. But Nasheed, the former political prisoner who ended the 30-year rule of former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom last year, would remain in charge of the government, appointing the Cabinet.
■ICELAND
Parliament to vote on EU bid
The government said on Sunday it would ask parliament to vote on whether the recession-hit country should start membership talks with the EU. Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir said a bill authorizing accession talks would be introduced when the parliament, the Althingi, resumes sitting on Friday. “In the coming weeks the demand of the people of Iceland will be to find out what the EU has to offer to us,” Sigurdardottir said. “It would not be fair for the Althingi to prevent that.” Sigurdardottir and Finance Minister Steingrimur Sigfusson also introduced their new Cabinet, two weeks after their two party coalition won elections. Talks on forming a government had snagged on whether Iceland should seek to join the EU, and potentially the euro — seen by many Icelanders as the country’s best route out of financial crisis. Sigurdardottir’s Social Democratic Alliance supports EU membership, while Sigfusson’s Left Green Movement opposes it.
■EGYPT
Five-year-old has bird flu
A five-year-old girl has contracted the bird flu virus after coming into contact with infected birds, the state news agency MENA reported on Sunday. The case brings to 69 the number of people confirmed to have contracted the H5N1 avian influenza virus in the country, which has been hit harder than any another country outside Asia. MENA, citing the Health Ministry, said the girl from Sohag Province was being treated with the anti-viral drug Tamiflu and was in a stable condition. Some 26 Egyptians have died after contracting the virus.
■GEORGIA
President to meet opposition
President Mikhail Saakashvili was scheduled to meet yesterday with four members of the opposition coalition — Irakli Alasania, Levan Gachechiladze, Salome Zurabishvili and Kakha Shartava — who have demanded his resignation during a month of protests that have brought the capital to a standstill. The opposition says the president backtracked on democratic promises and provoked last year’s disastrous war with Russia. “Our demand remains unchanged — that is for Saakashvili to resign,” opposition politician Georgy Khaindrava said on Sunday. Saakashvili has refused to step down before his term is up in 2013.
■ISRAEL
Alleged murderers on trial
The mother and grandfather of a murdered four-year-old girl have gone on trial for her killing. Frenchwoman Marie-Charlotte Renault and Israeli Roni Ron, who was her lover, were charged with killing Rose Pizem last year. The indictment states they stuffed her body into a suitcase and threw it into a river in Tel Aviv. Police said at the time that the little girl had bounced back and forth between her father in France and her mother in Israel. She was allegedly abused or neglected by both.
■SAUDI ARABIA
Progress in nuclear talks
French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said on Sunday that Paris and Riyadh have made “good progress” towards finalizing a civilian nuclear energy cooperation agreement and a deal could be signed soon. “It involves cooperation in civil nuclear energy under the best security conditions,” Lagarde told reporters in Riyadh after talks with King Abdullah, Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi, Finance Minister Ibrahim al-Assaf and other officials. French President Nicolas Sarkozy offered Riyadh help last year to develop civilian nuclear energy.
■COLOMBIA
Rebels kill seven soldiers
Seven soldiers were killed and four wounded overnight in an ambush by leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guerrillas in the southwestern part of the country, a senior regional official said on Sunday. Government secretary Fabio Trujillo of Narino, the department bordering Ecuador, said the attack on an army patrol by the rebels took place overnight on Saturday into Sunday in rural Samaniego municipality. The ambush occurred at almost the same time as an explosive device was triggered near the Samaniego police quarters, slightly wounding two officers, Trujillo said.
■MEXICO
Nine killed by gunmen
Gunmen killed nine people in three separate attacks in the drug-plagued western state of Michoacan, authorities said on Sunday. The state attorney general’s office said gunmen broke into a ranch in a rural area and shot dead five employees, along with four horses and a bull. Three brothers were shot to death in the Michoacan city of Zamora in a separate attack, and another was killed by gunmen in the city of Arteaga. Prosecutors said the motives in the Saturday attacks are under investigation. Drug gangs have fought frequent turf battles in Michoacan.
■MEXICO
Singing cowboy thief nabbed
Clearly unfazed by the swine flu outbreak, a machete-wielding thief dressed like a crooning cowboy stole his victims’ belongings and forced them to listen to him sing, authorities said. Police arrested Vicente Fernandez decked out in a charro (singing cowboy) outfit, with a 40cm machete he used to frighten passersby into handing over their loot, local police spokesman Alfredo Barro said. But his crime did not stop there: At least one victim — machete pressed to his throat — was forced to listen to the thief (who shares the name of a real singer) belt out his own bit of warbling.
■UNITED STATES
Duck family reunited
Just in time for Mother’s Day, a mother duck has been reunited with two of her babies who fell into a storm drain in Manchester, New Hampshire. The mother was crossing the street with 11 ducklings parading behind her on Thursday when two of the little ones tumbled through a grate, the New Hampshire Union Leader newspaper reported. Workers at a nearby hair salon called police, who sent a crew from the city water works department. While salon workers corralled the upset mother duck and other ducklings in a box, the city workers opened the grate, climbed into the drain and rescued the two ducklings.
■BRAZIL
Floodwaters recede, 40 die
Floodwaters receded in inundated towns across the northern part of the country on Sunday, but the number of homeless rose above 300,000 and two people were missing after an overloaded canoe overturned in swift waters. Forty deaths had been confirmed in the north’s worst flooding in decades, fed by two months of unusually heavy rains in a zone stretching from deep in the Amazon to normally arid areas near the Atlantic coast. In Maranhao State, one of the worst affected regions, a small canoe capsized with seven people aboard on a river between the towns of Pedreiras and Trizidela do Vale. Two passengers were missing: a 54-year-old man and a 22-year-old woman.
People with missing teeth might be able to grow new ones, said Japanese dentists, who are testing a pioneering drug they hope will offer an alternative to dentures and implants. Unlike reptiles and fish, which usually replace their fangs on a regular basis, it is widely accepted that humans and most other mammals only grow two sets of teeth. However, hidden underneath our gums are the dormant buds of a third generation, said Katsu Takahashi, head of oral surgery at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital in Osaka, Japan. His team launched clinical trials at Kyoto University Hospital in October, administering an experimental
‘GOOD POLITICS’: He is a ‘pragmatic radical’ and has moderated his rhetoric since the height of his radicalism in 2014, a lecturer in contemporary Islam said Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the leader of the Islamist alliance that spearheaded an offensive that rebels say brought down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ended five decades of Baath Party rule in Syria. Al-Jolani heads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Syria’s branch of al-Qaeda. He is a former extremist who adopted a more moderate posture in order to achieve his goals. Yesterday, as the rebels entered Damascus, he ordered all military forces in the capital not to approach public institutions. Last week, he said the objective of his offensive, which saw city after city fall from government control, was to
IVY LEAGUE GRADUATE: Suspect Luigi Nicholas Mangione, whose grandfather was a self-made real-estate developer and philanthropist, had a life of privilege The man charged with murder in the killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare made it clear he was not going to make things easy on authorities, shouting unintelligibly and writhing in the grip of sheriff’s deputies as he was led into court and then objecting to being brought to New York to face trial. The displays of resistance on Tuesday were not expected to significantly delay legal proceedings for Luigi Nicholas Mangione, who was charged in last week’s Manhattan killing of Brian Thompson, the leader of the US’ largest medical insurance company. Little new information has come out about motivation,
‘MONSTROUS CRIME’: The killings were overseen by a powerful gang leader who was convinced his son’s illness was caused by voodoo practitioners, a civil organization said Nearly 200 people in Haiti were killed in brutal weekend violence reportedly orchestrated against voodoo practitioners, with the government on Monday condemning a massacre of “unbearable cruelty.” The killings in the capital, Port-au-Prince, were overseen by a powerful gang leader convinced that his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion, the civil organization the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD) said. It was the latest act of extreme violence by powerful gangs that control most of the capital in the impoverished Caribbean country mired for decades in political instability, natural disasters and other woes. “He decided to cruelly punish all
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