■CHINA
Beijing denies spy claims
Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang (秦剛) yesterday rejected accusations Beijing was spying on exiled dissident groups, after a man was jailed in Sweden for collecting information about Uighur expatriates on Beijing’s behalf. “This kind of accusation is totally groundless and has ulterior motives,” Qin said. Babur Maihesuti, a 62-year-old Uighur who had been living in Sweden for 13 years as a political refugee, was sentenced by a Stockholm court to 16 months in prison on Monday. The court found that from January 2008 to last June, he had collected personal information about exiled Uighurs, including details on their health, travel and political involvement, and passed it on to a Chinese diplomat and a journalist.
■AUSTRALIA
Arrest made in tot’s death
Indian taxi driver Gursewak Dhillon was remanded in custody yesterday over the killing of Indian toddler Gurshan Singh. Dhillon, 23, was charged with manslaughter by criminal negligence. Police have alleged that Dhillon, one of six adults who shared a Melbourne home with the Singh family, dumped the boy’s body near the city’s airport last Thursday. Police have accused him of placing the alive but unconscious child in the trunk of his car and driving around for three hours before disposing of the body.
■NEW ZEALAND
‘Ghostly’ vials sell online
Two glass vials said to contain the ghosts of an old man and a young girl have been sold online for nearly US$2,000. The sale for NZ$2,830 was confirmed yesterday after auction Web site Trademe ruled out a phantom bidder who had pushed the price up to NZ$5,000. Avie Woodbury, from Christchurch, said she put the bottled spirits up for sale after an exorcist from a spiritualist church captured two ghosts in her home and put them in vials of “holy water.” The spirits — said to be of an old man named Les Graham who died in the house during the 1920s and a powerful and disruptive “little girl” — allegedly turned up in the house following an experiment with a Ouija board. Woodbury said the ghosts had prevented her from eating or sleeping. “I would get things like the jug boiling itself … and items going missing then turning up in weird places,” she said. “The dog was mental, he wouldn’t go into certain rooms and my brother’s daughter … said she spoke to a little girl. We have had no activity since they were bottled on July 15, 2009.”
■AUSTRALIA
Report slams ‘visa factories’
Some colleges catering to foreigners operated more as visa factories than education providers, the author of a government review of the US$15.5 billion industry said yesterday. While the vast majority of students were satisfied with the education they received, unscrupulous operators had entered the market, it said. “We have permanent residency factories,” review author Bruce Baird said. “They probably represent 20 percent of the vocational sector.”
■SOUTH KOREA
Medals said to boost morale
Kim Yu-na’s stunning win at last month’s Winter Olympic will not only boost the career of the figure skater, it should help add about US$18 billion to the national economy, Samsung Economic Research Institute economist Lee Dong-hun said. He broke down the financial benefits into such areas as greater brand recognition for firms and a boost for exports and domestic demand, as well as indirect effects, including a boost to public morale.
■NETHERLANDS
Campaign promotes suicide
A campaign to give elderly people the right to assisted suicide says it has gathered more than 100,000 signatures, hoping to push the boundaries another notch in the country that first legalized euthanasia. The signatures are enough to force a debate in parliament, where it is certain to face resistance. Even if widely approved, the proposal would normally go through a lengthy process of committee work and consensus-building that could take years. The legalization of euthanasia for the terminally ill in 2002 was preceded by decades of discussion and quiet negotiation that attached stringent conditions and medical supervision.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Man caught producing ricin
A white supremacist has pleaded guilty to producing the deadly poison ricin and preparing for acts of terrorism. Truck driver Ian Davison and his teenage son Nicky were arrested in June in northern Newcastle. Police say traces of ricin were found in a jam jar at Davison’s home. The poison has no antidote and can be lethal in very small amounts. Davison pleaded guilty on Monday at Newcastle Crown Court to producing a chemical weapon — ricin — and preparing for acts of terrorism. Details of his targets were not released. Nicky Davison has been charged with possessing information likely to be useful to a terrorist and has been released on bail until his trial next month.
■CYPRUS
Ex-president’s corpse found
Police said yesterday they discovered the corpse of former president Tassos Papadopoulos, three months after it was snatched from its grave in a crime that shocked the Mediterranean island. Police said the corpse, found at a cemetery on the outskirts of the capital, Nicosia, late on Monday after a tip-off, had been identified by family members and subjected to DNA tests. “We have received the DNA test results and the body is that of the late president,” police spokesman Michalis Katsounodos said. Papadopoulos died in December 2008 and his body was stolen last December, a day before the anniversary of his death.
■ISRAEL
Nuclear plan touted
The country wants to develop nuclear energy. National Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau was expected to announce the country’s interest in developing nuclear power yesterday at an international nuclear energy conference in Paris. Construction of such a plant would draw new attention to the nation’s nuclear activities, which is widely believed to have a stockpile of nuclear weapons. It has never acknowledged or denied that. Landau’s office says no specific plans to set up a nuclear power plant have been drawn up. The idea of generating nuclear energy has been floating around for years.
■SOMALIA
Kidnapped couple reunites
A British yachting couple seized by pirates and held in separate locations have been temporarily reunited after weeks apart, a doctor who treated the two said. Paul and Rachel Chandler were suffering from severe anxiety brought on by their separation and captivity in the war-ravaged, Abdi Mohamed Elmi Hangul said during an interview at Medina Hospital. The two were seized from their yacht, the Lynn Rival, in October and have been held apart for most of their captivity. Hangul said the pirates had phoned him on Sunday and said the couple had been temporarily reunited.
■UNITED STATES
Man accused of terrorism
An African man provided money and was trained with weapons and explosives in a bid to help a terrorist organization seeking to destabilize Somalia and attack US interests, prosecutors said on Monday. Mohamed Ibrahim Ahmed was held without bail after a brief appearance before a federal magistrate judge in Manhattan. He was to enter a plea at a second court appearance scheduled for yesterday. His lawyer, Sabrina Shroff, said he will plead not guilty. Ahmed, a citizen of Eritrea, was brought to the US on Saturday to face an indictment accusing him of going to Somalia last year to help al-Shabaab, a group designated by the US government as a terrorist organization.
■CANADA
Air India perjury trial halted
The perjury trial of a man who gave key testimony at the trial of the 1985 Air India terrorist bombings that killed 331 people has been delayed because the jury has been dismissed. Inderjit Singh Reyat is charged with lying 27 times under oath in the trial against his alleged co-conspirators in the plot. The charges stem from Reyat’s testimony in the trial of Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik. They were acquitted of first-degree murder and conspiracy March 16, 2005, after a trial lasting almost two years. Flight 182 from Montreal to Heathrow, London, disappeared from radar off the Irish coast June 23, 1985, when a bomb exploded killing all 329 people on board.
■CANADA
US weighs Khadr return
The US government is quietly seeking a way to repatriate the youngest Guantanamo inmate, Canadian Omar Khadr, local media said on Monday. “They don’t have the stomach to try a child for war crimes,” a source with knowledge of the matter told the Canwest newspaper group. US forces in Afghanistan took Khadr prisoner when he was just 15 years old in July 2002. He was later charged with war crimes for allegedly throwing a grenade that killed a US soldier. The last Westerner at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Khadr has been held at the controversial detention center for the past seven years, and is scheduled to face a US military trial in July. Officials in Ottawa have insisted they would wait until the US has dealt with the serious charges against Khadr before making any request for his repatriation.
■MEXICO
Police chief’s house attacked
Gunmen opened fire on a police chief’s house in the south, killing his 23-year-old daughter and a bodyguard and wounding three others, police said on Monday. Anacleto Flores Valle, the chief of police in the Pacific coast town of Petatlan, was uninjured when heavily armed men in two trucks opened fire on his home on Sunday. The gunmen fled and were not identified. Petatlan is near the Pacific coast resorts of Ixtapa and Zihuatenejo.
■CUBA
Paper blasts foreign media
Havana on Monday strongly criticized foreign press coverage of a dissident hunger striker as part of a campaign to discredit the island’s political system. Guillermo Farinas, a freelance opposition journalist, has refused food and water since Feb. 24 to protest the death of another hunger striker and demand the release from jail of some 26 political prisoners said to be in poor health. “Cuba will not accept pressure or blackmail,” a red-letter headline in the Communist Party daily Granma said. “Important Western media groups are again calling attention to a prefabricated lie,” the paper said.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
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