RUSSIA
Prison chief ambushed
Police said the regional prison service chief in the restive province of Dagestan in the North Caucasus has been wounded by militants. Police spokesman Vyacheslav Gasanov said yesterday that unidentified assailants late on Thursday ambushed a vehicle carrying Muslim Dakhayev in the provincial capital, Makhachkala. Last month, Dakhayev’s deputy was killed in a similar ambush along with his daughter, nephew and a driver.
AFGHANISTAN
NATO reports another death
NATO forces say an international service member has been killed in an insurgent attack in the south. The military coalition did not provide further details in yesterday’s statement on the attack, which happened on Thursday. NATO typically waits for national authorities to release specifics about their casualties. It was the ninth international military death since the beginning of this month. So far this year, at least 462 international troops have been killed in the country.
NIGERIA
Union turns on army
A union of cellphone sellers and repairers is accusing a soldier of killing their leader, a rare public protest against the military. Protesters marched to an army barracks on Thursday to demand justice for the death of the cellphone market chairman known as Umar Quality. Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Hassan Mohammed said the army was investigating and that, if found guilty, the suspect would be disciplined. The military’s presence has been pervasive in the northeastern city of Maiduguri since June, when a special taskforce was deployed to fight a radical Muslim sect responsible for a rash of killings. However, residents have complained about abuses, at one time asking for the force’s complete withdrawal.
UNITED KINGDOM
Seniors snub sex workshop
An event organized to school a city’s seniors in the arts of safe sex has been canceled because of a lack of interest. The “Generation Sex” workshop was part of an annual over-60s festival in the city of Portsmouth and billed as a “frank, fun and factual” way for seniors to talk about sex in later life. “The background was the risk of sexually transmitted diseases in older people and the need to practice safer sex,” said Drusilla Moody, Portsmouth Council’s tourism and visitor services manager. Entry would have been free, but those taking part would have had to supply proof of age and residency in Portsmouth. However, the workshop was canceled “because too few people booked places,” Moody said.
FRANCE
Teacher sets self on fire
A high-school math teacher in Beziers doused herself with a flammable material and set herself alight in the schoolyard during recess on Thursday, Minister of Education Luc Chatel said. The motives behind the incident were not immediately clear. The teacher, whose name has not been released, was flown via helicopter to nearby Montpellier and hospitalized with serious burns. “I saw a person who was running and on fire. It was a human torch,” said Dolores Roques, a fellow teacher at the school, on France-Info radio. “I didn’t believe my eyes. It seemed unreal. The students were screaming everywhere.” Chatel visited the hospital and said a psychological support unit would be set up in the school.
BRAZIL
No ban on Bundchen’s ad
The National Advertising Council on Thursday denied a request to ban a TV ad featuring lingerie-clad supermodel Gisele Bundchen after a government agency called it sexist. “The stereotypes in this ad campaign are common in society, easily identifiable and do not denigrate women,” the council said. The Ministry for Women submitted a request last month to suspend the ad, saying it reinforces the stereotype of women as sex objects. In the commercial, Brazilian-born Bundchen is clad in panties, a bra and high heels, in an effort to distract her husband when she delivers bad news — about damaging the car, exceeding her credit limit and her mother coming to live with them. Some men had called for the ad to be put down because it took them for “idiots.”
VENEZUELA
Shoot first, Chavez says
President Hugo Chavez is proposing that legislators consider allowing the shooting down of suspected drug-trafficking planes that ignore orders to land. Chavez said in a televised speech on Thursday that such a threat would discourage cartels from flying drugs over Venezuela. He says military aircraft sometimes chase planes suspected of transporting drugs, but pilots of the planes ignore orders to land and just keep going. Venezuela lies next ot Colombia has become an important route for traffickers moving cocaine to Europe and the US.
PERU
Fujimori in hospital
Former president Alberto Fujimori was hospitalized on Thursday after falling out of bed in a prison where he is serving a sentence for human rights violations, according to his family and his lawyer. Fujimori, 73, suffered a cut on his ear that required minor surgery, said his son, Kenji Fujimori. The former leader, who is also suffering from cancer, needs observation for a possible brain injury suffered in the fall, said his son, who is a lawmaker. His lawyer Cesar Nakazaki said a scan showed no neurological damage. National Penitentiary Institute director Jose Luis Perez, who visited Fujimori at the hospital, said he was in “stable” condition.
GUATEMALA
Ex-president on the run
Former president Oscar Mejia Victores was declared a “fugitive from justice” on Thursday, a day after an arrest warrant was issued for the civil war-era leader on charges of genocide and war crimes. The 80-year-old general ruled from 1983 to 1985 after gaining power through a coup. Prosecutors had also issued two other warrants for officials during that era and arrested one of them — former military intelligence chief Jose Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez. The other individual, identified only as Mendoza Garcia, remains at large.
HONDURAS
Murder rate nears record
Honduras stands to break world records with its murder rate — estimated at 86 per 100,000 inhabitants — putting it ahead of war-torn countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, a study by the Violence Observatory at the National Autonomous University of Honduras showed on Thursday. The murder rate was 43.7 per 100,000 inhabitants during the first half of this year, up from 36.6 for the same period last year. The figure far outpaced countries known for high violence, such as Brazil, Venezuela and South Africa. Honduras violence left 3,587 people dead during the first six months of this year, up from 2,929 victims during the same period last year.
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.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
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
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
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