■INDIA
Cyclone claims 31 lives
A cyclone demolished nearly 50,000 mud huts and uprooted trees in several villages in the east, killing at least 31 people, Civil Defense Minister Srikumar Mukherjee said yesterday. The official said the cyclone struck on Tuesday night in North Dinajpur district of West Bengal state, snapping telephone and electricity lines in the area. He added that hundreds of people suffered injuries in the region, about 500km northeast of Calcutta, the capital of West Bengal state. The worst-hit villages were Hematabad, Raiganj and Kiran Dighi, where police and rescue workers have recovered 31 bodies, Mukherjee said.
■CHINA
Two nabbed in snake attack
Guangzhou City police said yesterday they had arrested two brothers suspected of releasing poisonous snakes to seek revenge in a dispute with a local leader. They said that brothers Guo Gongwei and Guo Gongtian bought the short-tail pit vipers at a market, where they are sold as food and medicine. Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper reported that 500 snakes were released near the home of the village leader, identified only by the surname Song, with whom the brothers were feuding. Police said the snakes didn’t hurt anyone.
■MALAYSIA
Anwar loses to accuser
An Islamic court yesterday threw out a bid by opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim to bring slander charges against his former aide who accused him of sodomy. The verdict marks a setback in Anwar’s efforts to discredit Saiful Bukhari Azlan, 24, who has accused the politician of forcing him to have anal sex. Sodomy is a crime that carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years in prison. Anwar had filed an application in the Shariah High Court to have Saiful charged with making false allegations because he failed to produce four credible male witnesses to back his claim, as generally required by Islamic law for anyone who makes accusations of unlawful sex.
■INDONESIA
Demolition sparks clashes
Bloody clashes broke out in Jakarta yesterday between scores of demonstrators and security forces over the demolition of a cemetery, witnesses and officials said. Security forces used teargas and pepper bullets against protesters armed with machetes and sticks in more than two hours of clashes around the cemetery in Jakarta’s Koja area. Witnesses saw at least five demonstrators beaten severely with batons by police as they were being led to emergency vehicles. Twenty-nine members of the security forces were injured, nine of them seriously, Jakarta city spokesman Cucu Ahmad Kurnia said.
■ZIMBABWE
Hangman wanted
Chikurubi prison outside Harare has been trying to find a hangman for five years, but in vain, the Daily News of Zimbabwe reported. The absence of an executioner is a mixed blessing for 50 condemned men. It is a reprieve, but it is also an agonizing and indefinite wait on death row in a jail dubbed a “gulag” because of its inhumane conditions. The country’s last hangman quit in 2005. The job has since remained unfilled, despite unemployment hitting 94 percent last year. The Daily News said the requirements were: “Prison officials say the job of a hangman involves techniques and procedures that are very simple to learn. The candidate ... need not possess any previous experience, neither does he have to be literate. The hangman’s job is reserved only for men. The job demands strength and unwavering focus. It is not for the faint-hearted.”
■ICELAND
Plane makes quick landing
An American Airlines flight from Paris to Fort Worth, Texas, carrying 145 people, made an emergency landing on Tuesday at Keflavik airport, an airport spokesman said. Flight AAL49 “landed safely at 13:50 [GMT],” Fridthor Eydal said. “There was a report from the pilot that he wanted to divert here because of the smell of fumes in the cabin,” he said. Eydal said the passengers had all disembarked while the Boeing 767 was being inspected to determine the cause of the fumes.
■FRANCE
US actor preaches hope
US film star Samuel L. Jackson met young people in a poor Paris suburb on Tuesday, spotlighting deprived districts that mainstream French cinema, like its politicians, is accused of neglecting. Jackson broke off his holidays along with his wife, Latanya Richardson, to visit Bondy, which was among many suburban districts or banlieues hit in 2005 by violent protests sparked by tensions between police and youths. Jackson, 61, a black actor who grew up in Tennessee at the time of racial segregation, drew parallels with the tensions that smoulder today in France’s deprived immigrant districts, crippled by unemployment.
His visit was set up by the US ambassador to France, Charles Rivkin, a former entertainment industry executive who has run various cultural projects to reach out to the banlieues.
■ISRAEL
Bank cleared of terrorism
A Jordan-based bank at the center of a multimillion-dollar legal case says Israel has cleared it of involvement in terrorism. The Arab Bank on Tuesday produced an Israeli military document that says it could not prove the bank’s funds were linked to suicide bombings and other deadly attacks. Israeli troops raided the bank’s Ramallah branch more than six years ago and seized millions of dollars. The news could undermine a massive lawsuit filed by hundreds of relatives of Israeli victims of Palestinian militant attacks in a New York federal court.
■FRANCE
Driving instructor busted
A driving instructor taught three of his students a lesson about the consequences of speeding, when police stopped him for exceeding the speed limit, with the students in the car. Police suspended the instructor’s license for four months after he was clocked at 134kph in a 70kph zone in Valence in the southeast. The students had just taken driving tests when he was stopped. It was unclear whether they passed their tests.
■UNITED STATES
Oprah hosts octuplet mom
A lawyer for Nadya Suleman, a mother of octuplets, said she will appear on The Oprah Winfrey Show next week and discuss how she is raising her 14 children. Jeff Czech told the Orange County Register on Tuesday that Oprah sent a TV crew to film at Suleman’s La Habra home last week. He says Suleman went to a Los Angeles studio to film a remote interview with Oprah that is scheduled to air on April 20. The attorney says the interview covered “straight talk” about surviving with her family of 14 and Oprah asked his client “some hardballs,” or tough questions.
■MEXICO
Air crash kills five
A cargo aircraft crashed late on Tuesday near the airport in the northern city of Monterrey, killing five people, emergency authorities reported. The aircraft, operated by privately held AeroUnion, crashed near a major road leading to the airport, killing as many as two people on board the aircraft and three on the ground, media reported. Emergency officials were unable to confirm the number of fatalities. Security forces blocked off the area around the crash site as firefighters battled a blaze on the ground, a witness said.
■CANADA
Ex-Quebec minister probed
Quebec Premier Jean Charest on Tuesday announced a probe into his former justice minister’s allegations of influence peddling by Liberal fundraisers in judicial nominations. Marc Bellemare, who was Quebec justice minister from 2003 to 2004, accused party bagmen in those years of wielding undue influence on various government nominations, including judicial appointments. He also told public broadcaster Radio-Canada on Monday that the Charest government had taken donations in cash to skirt election finance laws that limit political contributions to C$3,000 (US$3,000). Charest declined to open a broader inquiry demanded by the opposition into the local construction sector’s close ties to the provincial government and reports of lucrative building contracts being sold for political support.
■UNITED STATES
Anti-wither spray developed
In a development that could make manufacturers of anti-aging creams jealous, scientists say they have discovered a spray that can add up to a month to the life of cut flowers and potted plants in bloom. A quick spritz with a solution containing a synthetic chemical called thidiazuron, or “TDZ,” can delay the withering process. A team of international researchers, working for the US Department of Agriculture and led by Jiang Cai-zhong, a plant physiologist at the University of California-Davis, found that TDZ, when added to water in concentrations of five to 10 parts per million, can achieve “significant, sometimes spectacular, effects.” TDZ is a synthetic version of a plant hormone known as a “cytokinin.”
■COLOMBIA
Drug lord nabbed in Ecuador
Ecuadorean police on Tuesday arrested accused Colombian drug lord Ramon Quintero, one of the five most wanted men in Colombia who is also being sought for extradition by the US, authorities in Bogota said. The US had offered a US$1 million reward for Quintero, who police say got his start in crime with the Norte del Valle cocaine cartel. He later formed his own gang, which is accused of smuggling tonnes of the drug into the US and Spain from Colombia’s Pacific and Atlantic coasts. Quintero was arrested in Ecuador’s capital city, Quito, a Colombian police statement said.
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland on Tuesday expressed concern about “the political crisis” in Georgia, two days after Mikheil Kavelashvili was formally inaugurated as president of the South Caucasus nation, cementing the ruling party’s grip in what the opposition calls a blow to the country’s EU aspirations and a victory for former imperial ruler Russia. “We strongly condemn last week’s violence against peaceful protesters, media and opposition leaders, and recall Georgian authorities’ responsibility to respect human rights and protect fundamental freedoms, including the freedom to assembly and media freedom,” the three ministers wrote in a joint statement. In reaction
BARRIER BLAME: An aviation expert questioned the location of a solid wall past the end of the runway, saying that it was ‘very bad luck for this particular airplane’ A team of US investigators, including representatives from Boeing, on Tuesday examined the site of a plane crash that killed 179 people in South Korea, while authorities were conducting safety inspections on all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by the country’s airlines. All but two of the 181 people aboard the Boeing 737-800 operated by South Korean budget airline Jeju Air died in Sunday’s crash. Video showed the aircraft, without its landing gear deployed, crash-landed on its belly and overshoot a runaway at Muan International Airport before it slammed into a barrier and burst into flames. The plane was seen having engine trouble.
REVELRY ON HOLD: Students marched in Belgrade amid New Year’s events, saying that ‘there is nothing to celebrate’ after the train station tragedy killed 15 Thousands of students marched in Belgrade and two other Serbian cities during a New Year’s Eve protest that went into yesterday, demanding accountability over the fatal collapse of a train station roof in November. The incident in the city of Novi Sad occurred on Nov. 1 at a newly renovated train facility, killing 14 people — aged six to 74 — at the scene, while a 15th person died in hospital weeks later. Public outrage over the tragedy has sparked nationwide protests, with many blaming the deaths on corruption and inadequate oversight of construction projects. In Belgrade, university students marched through the capital
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