■DENMARK
Arms merchant arrested
A man who has admitted parachuting arms into the Indian state of West Bengal in 1995 was arrested on Friday after officials in agreed to back his extradition, authorities said. A prosecutor said police had long known that Niels Holcks, 47, was in Denmark, but negotiations over his possible extradition had dragged on for years. “It is correct that we have had knowledge of Niels Holcks’ whereabouts in Denmark since 2001,” Birgitte Bundsgaard said. “The reason why the ministry of justice decided to arrest him today is partly that it has taken several years to negotiate the terms for a potential extradition with Indian authorities.”
■AFGHANISTAN
Bullet removed from head
A US military doctor removed a live round of ammunition from the head of an Afghan soldier in an unusual and harrowing surgery. Doctors say a 14.5mm unexploded round — more than 5cm long — was removed from the scalp of an Afghan National Army soldier at the Bagram Air Field hospital last month. When the Afghan soldier, in his 20s, arrived at the base, doctors thought it was shrapnel or the spent end of some sort of round, said Lieutenant-Colonel Anthony Terreri, a radiologist deployed from Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. But as he reviewed a CAT scan of the soldier, he realized it was a much bigger problem, an Air Force news release said last week.
■CHINA
Mine death toll mounts
Rescuers recovered yet another body at a coal mine in the north, bringing the death toll from a massive flood to 26, state media reported yesterday. Twelve people still remained unaccounted for at the huge, unfinished Wangjialing mine in Shanxi Province, 13 days after it was flooded in the latest high-profile incident to hit the country’s notoriously dangerous mining sector. The flood left 153 workers trapped underground, but 115 were rescued alive on Monday in what officials called a “miracle.”
■AUSTRALIA
Asylum block questioned
A decision to temporarily block asylum-seekers from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka could face a legal challenge, lawyers said yesterday. On Friday, Canberra announced it would immediately stop taking fresh applications from asylum-seekers from those two countries, as it attempts to thwart people smuggling operations. But the Australian Lawyers Alliance said the policy, which means new arrivals from those countries cannot apply for asylum for between three and six months, could breach the law by discriminating against Afghans and Sri Lankans. “The law in Australia and the rule of law is such that laws have to be applied equally, irrespective of where a person comes from or their race,” the alliance’s Greg Barns told ABC Radio.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Cat terrifies postal service
Britain’s postal service says it has suspended deliveries to a woman following repeated attacks by her 19-year-old cat. Royal Mail said on Friday that it had halted deliveries because postal workers had already sustained “nasty injuries” at the address in the town of Farsley, near Leeds in northern Britain. The woman was identified as a 43-year-old pharmacy worker. Media reports say she found it hard to believe that her cat, named “Tiger,” could be behind the attacks. She told two newspapers the animal spent most of its day sleeping and didn’t have the energy to chase postal workers.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
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