■PAKISTAN
Five dead in ‘drone attack’
A suspected US drone attack killed five people as part of an unprecedented wave of strikes since a deadly attack against the CIA across the border in Afghanistan, intelligence officials said. The two missiles slammed into a compound and a nearby vehicle on Tuesday in the Deegan area of North Waziristan, a zone dominated by the Haqqani network, an al-Qaeda-linked Afghan Taliban faction that many suspect helped orchestrate the Dec. 30 suicide bombing that killed seven CIA employees at a remote base in Khost Province.
■SOUTH KOREA
Court clears TV station
A court yesterday cleared staff at a leading TV station of distorting a report that fueled mass street protests in 2008 against US beef imports. Four producers and a scriptwriter at MBC were charged last June with defaming government officials by exaggerating the risk of mad cow disease associated with the US imports. The court rejected charges by prosecutors that the report had deliberately distorted facts and mistranslated interviews to exaggerate the threat of the disease.
■AUSTRALIA
Three koalas shot
Police said yesterday they were investigating the shooting of koalas in two separate incidents, including one involving a baby animal that was repeatedly hit. Police in the southern state of Victoria are looking for a group of men who allegedly killed one of the marsupials late on Tuesday as a passer-by watched. “The witness told police she saw three men from a late model, dark blue 4x4 utility shooting up a tree before seeing the animal fall to the ground,” a statement from Victoria Police said. In the second incident, a mother and baby koala were found with injuries inflicted by a slug gun north of Brisbane on Tuesday.
■SOUTH KOREA
Ministry encourages sex
The health ministry, which is charged with boosting the nation’s low birthrate, is turning off the lights in its offices once a month to encourage staff to go home by 7:30pm and make babies. The ministry said in a statement yesterday that the switches will be flicked at 7.30pm every third Wednesday in the month to “help staff get dedicated to childbirth and upbringing.” Those with urgent duties will be exempt from the switch-off. “Going home early may have no direct link to having more kids, but you cannot just completely rule out a possible link,” said Choi Jin-sun, who is in charge of the project at the ministry. “Korea may lose out in the global economic competition due to a lack of manpower.” Married staff at the ministry are not doing their bit, with an average of 1.63 children compared with 1.82 among all civil servants. The ministry aims to increase the figure to 2 in two years.
■PHILIPPINES
Estrada clear to run in poll
The elections body yesterday rejected all three remaining petitions to disqualify former leader Joseph “Erap” Estrada from polls in May, clearing the way for him to run for president for a second time. The petitioners, all from the private sector, may still file an appeal with the Commission on Elections and bring their case to the Supreme Court, but there was no immediate comment from them on whether they would do so. On Tuesday, the high court rejected another disqualification case against Estrada. The commission said the three petitions to bar Estrada from joining nine other candidates in the presidential race lacked merit.
■DENMARK
PM criticizes auction house
Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen on Tuesday criticized an auction house for refusing to sell a drawing by Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist behind the most controversial Mohammed cartoon. He warned of the dangers of “self-censorship and stigmatization, of which we are seeing the first signs,” adding: “If we start isolating, or turning our back on those who need our protection and support the most, we are giving up.” Online auction house Lauritz.com on Monday refused to include a Westergaard watercolor in a charity sale to benefit victims of the Haiti earthquake, citing security fears for its employees among other concerns. Westergaard said he found it “difficult to grasp how a non-political, non-religious watercolor could be censored, especially since the sale was for a good cause.”
■ANGOLA
Activists arrested
A human rights lawyer said that police are rounding up peaceful activists and accusing them of responsibility for the Jan. 8 attack on the Togo soccer team’s bus as it headed to the African Cup of Nations tournament. Martinho Nombo said on Tuesday that the five people arrested over the past week were not related to the separatist group that has claimed responsibility for the attack that killed three people and wounded eight. Authorities already had arrested two members of the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC). “But the five others that have been arrested have nothing to do with FLEC,” Nombo said. “They are just intellectuals that are expressing opinions the government doesn’t share. And as soon as somebody criticizes the government, he is tagged as a FLEC member.”
■UNITED KINGDOM
Divorce registry opens
Debenhams has created a gift list for those wishing to help a loved one with the pain ... and party atmosphere of modern divorce. The department store said it launched a divorce gift list service to reflect the increasing popularity of greeting cards, parties and cakes celebrating divorces. “A divorce means that one partner will be leaving the marital home and therefore be left without any essentials in their new house,” a store employee said. “Divorcing can be an expensive time and registering for a divorce gift list means that family and friends can help the newly separated begin their new life.”
■GERMANY
Pirate’s skull stolen
A nail-pierced skull believed to belong to the legendary pirate Klaus Stoertebeker has been stolen from a museum in Hamburg, authorities said on Tuesday. It was not immediately clear how and when the cranium vanished but staff at the Hamburg History Museum reported it missing on Jan. 9. The skull impaled on a large rusty nail was discovered in 1878 during construction in an area where pirates had earlier been beheaded and their heads displayed on spikes as a grisly warning. Stoertebeker is believed to have been executed in 1401 with 30 henchmen outside the walls of the city. Forensic analysis determined that the skull may belong to a man beheaded around 1400, although not necessarily Stoertebeker.
■UNITED KINGDOM
‘Love Story’ author dies
Erich Segal, the US Ivy League professor who attained mainstream fame and made millions sob as writer of the novel and movie Love Story, died of a heart attack at his home in London on Sunday, his daughter said on Tuesday. He was 72.
■UNITED STATES
‘Spenser’ author dies at 77
Bestselling novelist Robert Parker, who created the Spenser detective novels, died on Monday at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, his representative said on Tuesday. He was 77. Parker wrote more than 60 books, including nearly 40 novels featuring the tough Boston private investigator that was turned into the 1980s TV series Spenser: For Hire. Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, Parker earned several crime writing awards, including an Edgar Award in 1977 from the Mystery Writers of America for best novel for his fourth book in the Spenser series, Promised Land, which later became the pilot program for the TV series.
■CUBA
State sponsors sex change
The nation has begun performing state-sponsored sex-change operations after the government lifted a longtime ban on the procedure in 2007, President Raul Castro’s daughter said on Tuesday. A sexologist and gay-rights advocate, Mariela Castro runs the Center for Sex Education, which prepares transsexuals for sex-change operations and identifies Cubans it deems ready for the procedure. Speaking to reporters during the fifth Cuban Conference on Sexual Education, Orientation and Therapy, Castro said surgeries began in 2008 but would not specify exactly how many have been performed or how much they cost. She said only that Cuban doctors working with Belgian counterparts have gotten to “less than half” of the 30 islanders approved to undergo the procedure.
■CANADA
Singer McGarrigle dies
Folk singer and songwriter Kate McGarrigle, best known for performing with her sister Anna, died of cancer at her home in Montreal on Monday, said her brother-in-law, Dane Lanken, on Tuesday. He said McGarrigle had been battling cancer since the summer of 2006. Kate and Anna, known as the McGarrigle Sisters, began their careers performing at Montreal coffeehouses in the 1960s with a group called the Mountain City Four. They got their break in the 1970s, when their songs were covered by numerous artists, including Linda Ronstadt, who used Heart Like a Wheel as the title song to one of her albums. Their well-known own releases included The Work Song, Cool River and Lying Song.
■UNITED STATES
Man guilty of slapping girl
A Georgia man has been found guilty of second-degree child cruelty for slapping a crying two-year-old at a Walmart store. Roger Stephens of Stone Mountain was convicted on Tuesday in a Gwinnett County bench trial, which is held without a jury. Stephens, who was 61 when arrested, will spend six months in jail followed by six months of home confinement. Authorities said the girl and her mother were shopping on Aug. 31, when the toddler began crying. The police report said Stephens approached the mother and said: “If you don’t shut that baby up, I will shut her up for you.” They said Stephens then slapped her four or five times.
■COSTA RICA
American suspect in murder
The prosecutor general on Tuesday asked that an American woman accused of killing her multimillionaire husband be detained for four months. The woman is accused of murdering John Bender, 43, an American who had lived in Costa Rica for 10 years, and whose death was initially described as suicide. Bender’s wife, who has not been named, was admitted to a clinic suffering from anxiety but remains under police surveillance.
WAKE-UP CALL: Firms in the private sector were not taking basic precautions, despite the cyberthreats from China and Russia, a US cybersecurity official said A ninth US telecom firm has been confirmed to have been hacked as part of a sprawling Chinese espionage campaign that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and telephone conversations of an unknown number of Americans, a top White House official said on Friday. Officials from the administration of US President Joe Biden this month said that at least eight telecommunications companies, as well as dozens of nations, had been affected by the Chinese hacking blitz known as Salt Typhoon. US Deputy National Security Adviser for Cyber and Emerging Technologies Anne Neuberger on Friday told reporters that a ninth victim
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
A shark attack off Egypt’s Red Sea coast killed a tourist and injured another, authorities said on Sunday, with an Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs source identifying both as Italian nationals. “Two foreigners were attacked by a shark in the northern Marsa Alam area, which led to the injury of one and the death of the other,” the Egyptian Ministry of Environment said in a statement. A source at the Italian foreign ministry said that the man killed was a 48-year-old resident of Rome. The injured man was 69 years old. They were both taken to hospital in Port Ghalib, about 50km north
MISSING: Prosecutors urged the company to move workers out of poor living conditions to hotels, but residents said many workers had already left the town Brazil has stopped issuing temporary work visas for BYD, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday, in the wake of accusations that some workers at a site owned by the Chinese electric vehicle producer had been victims of human trafficking. The announcement came days after labor authorities said they found 163 Chinese workers who had been brought to Brazil irregularly in “slavery-like” conditions at the BYD factory construction site in the northeastern state of Bahia. The workers were employed by contractor Jinjiang Group, which has denied any wrongdoing. Later, the authorities also said the workers were victims of human trafficking,
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