■INDIA
Student dies for new state
A student has died after he set himself on fire in an apparent show of support for the creation of a new state in the south, the Press Trust of India news agency said yesterday. The 19-year-old was rushed to hospital on Saturday with 70 percent burns to his body after setting himself ablaze near Osmania University in Hyderabad, capital of Andhra Pradesh state. He died overnight of his injuries. Hyderabad has been at the center of protests since New Delhi announced in December that Andhra Pradesh would be carved into two. Supporters of the proposed new state of Telangana accuse the national government of moving too slowly in creating it.
■AUSTRALIA
‘Egg timer’ made for women
Women will soon be able to tell how many eggs they have in their ovaries in a simple hormone test that researchers said yesterday could revolutionize family planning and fertility treatment. The so called “egg timer” blood test would be able to accurately predict ovum levels based on the concentration of a specific fertility hormone, said conception specialist Peter Illingworth, medical director of IVF Australia. “I think this is a big step forward,” he said. “What the test will do is identify those younger women who may well be at serious risk of not having children easily when they’re older.” Women who had undergone treatment for cancer or endometriosis or had ovarian surgery would particularly benefit from the anti-mullerian hormone test, he said, which would cost just A$65 (US$58). He said the test would routinely be offered as soon as next month.
■MALAYSIA
Penang funicular closes
After years of breakdowns and stranded tourists, Penang bid farewell to its rickety Victorian funicular railway yesterday. “It’s sad that we have to call it a day for the old funicular but the two kilometers of tracks are very worn out and so are the coaches,” state transportation committee head Lim Hock Seng said. “They all need replacing.” Work on the inclined railway began in 1897 but took 26 years to complete. Its replacement is slated to be built in around seven months and will open in October. The railway takes tourists to the summit of 830m Penang hill. Lim said the tourism ministry was spending more than 63 million ringgit (US$18.5 million) to build a new system that will see air-conditioned coaches take passengers up the hill in 10 minutes compared to half an hour previously.
■PAKISTAN
Militants bomb two schools
Militants blew up two boys’ schools in the Mohmand tribal region near the Afghan border yesterday, the latest in a wave of attacks by Islamist extremists targeting educational institutions, local officials said. No one was hurt in the pre-dawn attacks. Local administration official Maqsood Khan blamed the attack on Taliban militants.
■INDONESIA
Obama statue relocated
A statue of US President Barack Obama that was removed from a public park on Feb. 14 will be relocated to his former school in Jakarta, a school official said yesterday. A statue of Obama as a 10-year-old boy was installed in Menteng Park in December but was recently removed by authorities after a campaign by locals, who argued that Obama has done little to deserve the tribute. Akhmad Solikhin, deputy headmaster of State Elementary School 01 Menteng, said the statue would be installed on the school grounds by early next week.
■IRAN
Naming row turns ugly
Tehran yesterday expelled a Greek steward working for a domestic airline after he argued with flight passengers over a “Persian Gulf” naming row, Fars news agency reported. The steward working for Kish Airline had a “verbal argument” with passengers on a Tehran-Kish flight on Friday, during which he threatened to arrest them, Fars said, quoting a top police officer. The incident occurred when passengers protested over the Gulf waterway being referred to as the Arabian Gulf on the plane’s in-flight monitor. The protest turned into an argument with the steward. The Islamic republic insists that the strategic body of water separating the oil-rich Arabian peninsula from the Iranian plateau be referred to as the Persian Gulf.
■ITALY
Hollywood gangs replayed
In the space of a few weeks, the country has witnessed bouts of violence involving immigrants that seem to be lifted straight from Hollywood films, starting with Mississippi Burning replayed in Calabria last month and, on the streets of Milan last week, West Side Story. After hundreds of African fruit pickers were hauled out of Rosarno in Calabria last month following battles with locals, an Egyptian man was left dying in Milan after a fight between North Africans and Latin Americans. The death of Ahmed Aziz El Saied, 19, was followed by hours of rioting by North Africans on Milan’s multi-ethnic Via Padova, during which 36 cars were damaged or overturned and five businesses, mostly run by South Americans, were destroyed. Statistics show immigrants total 4.3 million, 7.1 percent of the population, with 45 percent of young Italians opposed to immigration.
■RWANDA
Three parties to team up
Three emerging opposition parties said on Saturday they were considering linking up to fight incumbent President Paul Kagame in April elections he is widely expected to win. The Social Party Imberakuri (PS-Imberakuri) and two unregistered parties, the Democratic Green Party (DGP) and the United Democratic Forces, said in a joint statement they had formed a forum to discuss common problems. Frank Habineza, head of the DGP, said the parties face harassment, intimidation and legal and administrative barriers to registration, and may form one party to oppose Kagame’s ruling Rwandan Patriotic front. The government this week denied accusations by rights groups that it was using an anti-genocide ideology law to silence opposition parties.
■YEMEN
Government arrests 16
Government forces have arrested 16 people on suspicion of separatist activity in the south, security sources said on Saturday. The poorest Arab country is battling secessionists in the south, a Shiite insurgency in the north and a resurgent al-Qaeda, whose local arm claimed responsibility for a failed Christmas day bomb attempt on a US plane approaching Detroit. Those arrested were accused of taking part in unauthorized protests and jeopardizing security and unity in the Arabian Peninsula country, the sources said. Some group members were carrying anti-government leaflets and banners and others had attacked security forces with stones, they said. Further details were not available about the arrests, which took place in three provinces late on Friday. People in the south have long complained that northerners have abused a 1990 agreement that united the long-divided country.
■BRAZIL
Shipwreck survivors arrive
A Brazilian navy frigate carrying 10 of the 64 survivors from a sailing ship that sank off the Brazilian coast, arrived back on dry land on Saturday after a two day ordeal. The first 10 passengers were brought ashore to the Moncague base and a larger group was expected later in the day, a navy source said. A Navy spokesman said on Friday 64 people, most of them students from Canada’s West Island College, were rescued after the three-masted tall ship the Concordia sank off the Brazilian coast on Thursday during a storm.
■MEXICO
Drug violence claims 14
Gunmen killed 14 people in the state of Chihuahua overnight on Friday. Early on Saturday, a group of gunmen attacked a couple traveling in a car with young children. The attackers forced the family out of the car, separated the parents from the children and sprayed them all with bullets. The lifeless body of a woman bearing signs of violence and concealed under old tires was also found lying on a street in Ciudad Juarez. Seven other men, including two students about 20 years of age, were also killed overnight. A shootout between soldiers and gunmen killed two suspected criminals in Jimenez, a town in the south of Chihuahua. In central Chihuahua, a man was found dead in Camargo and a woman was shot to death inside her small business in Belisarius, police reports said.
■UNITED STATES
Brazilian wins cowboy title
Valdiron de Oliveira was the big winner of the Professional Bull Riders’ first tournament-style event on Saturday. The Brazilian won US$260,000 and the title of Iron Cowboy at Cowboys Stadium, outriding Travis Briscoe in the finals. De Oliveira stayed on Code Blue for 4.5 seconds to boost his career earnings to US$920,636. Briscoe lasted 3.6 seconds. The top two seeds — defending world champion Kody Lohstroh and J.B. Mauney — were gone before the semi-finals. The event started with 24 riders. De Oliveira nursed a sore right shoulder through each of his four rides, the pain appearing to get progressively worse. After opening with scores of 88.25 and 89.5, de Oliveira was bucked the last two. “After getting that check, it goes back to normal,” de Oliveira said.
■KENYA
Police rescue Canadian
A senior police officer says a Canadian man kidnapped four days ago has been rescued. David Kerina says the man was rescued on Saturday when undercover police tricked his captors into collecting a ransom they had demanded. The Canadian was kidnapped on Wednesday after dropping his child off at school in Nairobi. Kerina declined to identify the man.
■UNITED STATES
College lifts anthem ban
For more than a century, there was no playing of The Star-Spangled Banner at Goshen College — a small Christian college with ties to the Mennonite Church. However, for the first time, Goshen College will play the US national anthem before campus sporting events. The decision to reverse the ban is aimed at making students and visitors outside the faith feel more welcome, but it has roiled some at the college who feel the song undermines the church’s pacifist message and puts love for country above love for God. Since the college announced the decision last month, about 900 people have joined the Facebook group “Against Goshen College Playing National Anthem,” and hundreds have signed an online petition protesting the move.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
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