SINGAPORE
Two dozen charged over riot
Prosecutors will charge 24 Indian workers for taking part in the city-state’s first riot in more than 40 years, police said yesterday. The men face jail terms of up to 10 years plus caning for the hour-long fracas on Sunday night, triggered when an Indian construction worker was struck and killed by a private bus in a district known as Little India. The 55-year-old bus driver who killed Sakthivel Kumaravelu, 33, has been released on bail after being arrested on charges of causing death by a negligent act.
AFGHANISTAN
Woman saved from stoning
Police in a remote northern village rescued a woman from being stoned to death after she was condemned by the Taliban for allegedly cheating on her husband, officials said yesterday. The militants handed down the death penalty after the woman’s husband, a Taliban follower, accused her of having an affair. A Kunduz police spokesman said the rescue operation was launched after the woman’s relatives notified the police.
UNITED KINGDOM
Latin dictionary finished
A monumental dictionary of medieval British Latin has been completed after a century of research and drafting, in a project that spanned the careers of three editors and a small army of contributors. The 17th, and final, part of The Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources is published this week, drawing on more than 1,400 sources from the 6th to the 16th century. Medieval British Latin was particularly distinctive because it was affected by the diversity of native spoken languages, including English, French, Irish, Norse and Welsh. “It’s a difficult question to know how many people are going to use it. Fewer and fewer people know any Latin, but this means that more people will need a dictionary to know how to read it,” said Richard Ashdowne, current editor of the dictionary, who took over in 2011 from David Howlett when he retired after 31 years on the project.
TURKEY
Police probe art thefts
Police are investigating the theft of paintings and artifacts worth about US$30 million, media reported on Monday. They are hunting for about 40 paintings stolen from the State Museum of Art and Sculpture in Ankara after recovering another 30 major artworks in a raid in Istanbul last week. Radikal newspaper said that according to a 2010 inventory at the museum, more than 300 pieces had been stolen, including several dozen that had been replaced by fakes.
UNITED STATES
Roaches can handle winter
A species of cockroach native to Asia that has been seen crawling around the High Line, an elevated, outdoor park in lower Manhattan, can survive the city’s often brutal winters, according to a new study. Researchers at Rutgers University have identified the pest as Periplaneta japonica, which is native to Japan. How the bugs got to New York was unclear, but researchers speculated they were in the soil of one of the plants in the park. Researchers said the new roach cannot breed a hybrid super-roach by mating with the more common local variety due to mismatching genitalia.
UNITED STATES
Ex-mayor sentenced
Former San Diego mayor Bob Filner was sentenced on Monday to three months of home confinement and three years of probation for harassing women. He pleaded guilty in October to one felony and two misdemeanors.
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency and the Pentagon on Monday said that some North Korean troops have been killed during combat against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk border region. Those are the first reported casualties since the US and Ukraine announced that North Korea had sent 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia to help it in the almost three-year war. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said that about 30 North Korean troops were killed or wounded during a battle with the Ukrainian army at the weekend. The casualties occurred around three villages in Kursk, where Russia has for four months been trying to quash a
FREEDOM NO MORE: Today, protests in Macau are just a memory after Beijing launched measures over the past few years that chilled free speech A decade ago, the elegant cobblestone streets of Macau’s Tap Seac Square were jam-packed with people clamouring for change and government accountability — the high-water mark for the former Portuguese colony’s political awakening. Now as Macau prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of its handover to China tomorrow, the territory’s democracy movement is all but over and the protests of 2014 no more than a memory. “Macau’s civil society is relatively docile and obedient, that’s the truth,” said Au Kam-san (歐錦新), 67, a schoolteacher who became one of Macau’s longest-serving pro-democracy legislators. “But if that were totally true, we wouldn’t
ROYAL TARGET: After Prince Andrew lost much of his income due to his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, he became vulnerable to foreign agents, an author said British lawmakers failed to act on advice to tighten security laws that could have prevented an alleged Chinese spy from targeting Britain’s Prince Andrew, a former attorney general has said. Dominic Grieve, a former lawmaker who chaired the British Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) until 2019, said ministers were advised five years ago to introduce laws to criminalize foreign agents, but failed to do so. Similar laws exist in the US and Australia. “We remain without an important weapon in our armory,” Grieve said. “We asked for [this law] in the context of the Russia inquiry report” — which accused the government
TRUDEAU IN TROUBLE: US president-elect Donald Trump reacted to Chrystia Freeland’s departure, saying: ‘Her behavior was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland on Monday quit in a surprise move after disagreeing with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over US president-elect Donald Trump’s tariff threats. The resignation of Freeland, 56, who also stepped down as finance minister, marked the first open dissent against Trudeau from within his Cabinet, and could threaten his hold on power. Liberal leader Trudeau lags 20 points in polls behind his main rival, Conservative Pierre Poilievre, who has tried three times since September to topple the government and force a snap election. “It’s not been an easy day,” Trudeau said at a fundraiser Monday evening, but
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