SRI LANKA
Prisoners granted amnesty
President Ranil Wickremesinghe has granted amnesty to more than 1,000 convicts and released them from jails across the country to mark Christmas, a prisons official said yesterday. Among the 1,004 freed were those jailed for not being able to pay outstanding fines, Prison Commissioner Gamini Dissanayake said. A similar number of convicts were freed in May to mark Vesak, which celebrates the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and death. The latest pardon came after police arrested nearly 15,000 people during a week-long military-backed anti-narcotics drive that was halted on Christmas Eve.
CHINA
Beijing coldest in 70 years
Beijing recorded the most hours of subfreezing temperatures this month in more than seven decades as a cold wave has enveloped northern and central swathes of the country, bringing snowstorms and record-breaking temperatures. A weather observatory in the capital as of Sunday had recorded more than 300 hours of subfreezing temperatures since Dec. 11 — the most since records began, in 1951, the official newspaper Beijing Daily reported. The city experienced nine consecutive days with temperatures below minus-10°C, the paper added. Temperatures at 78 weather stations across the country hit record lows for the month of December, the National Meteorological Center said.
UNITED KINGDOM
UK to deploy ship off Guyana
The navy is to deploy a ship off Guyana later this month, the Ministry of Defence said on Sunday, as the South American nation faces a border dispute with neighbor Venezuela over the oil-rich Essequibo region. The deployment follows a visit by a British junior foreign minister to Guyana earlier this month, intended to offer the UK’s support for the country, an ally and former British colony. Guyana and Venezuela agreed earlier this month to avoid any use of force and not to escalate tensions in the long-running dispute.
PHILIPPINES
Troops kill nine rebels
Troops yesterday killed nine communist rebels in a series of firefights, about a month after the two sides agreed to resume peace talks, the armed forces said. The fighting occurred in four remote villages near the southern city of Malaybalay, a military statement said, at the start of a two-day unilateral Christmas truce declared by the Communist Party and its armed wing, the New People’s Army. The military’s Fourth Infantry Division did not immediately release details of the Malaybalay clashes.
UNITED KINGDOM
Secretary sorry for wife joke
Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs James Cleverly on Sunday apologized after he was reported to have joked about spiking his wife’s drink with a sedative known for its use as a date-rape drug. The Sunday Mirror tabloid reported that Cleverly, one of the most senior ministers in Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government, had joked to female guests at an event this month that “a little bit” of the drug in his wife’s drink was “not really illegal.” He reportedly joked that the secret to a long marriage was ensuring your spouse was “someone who is always mildly sedated so she can never realize there are better men out there.” “In what was always understood as a private conversation James, the Home Secretary tackling spiking, made what was clearly meant to be an ironic joke — for which he apologizes,” a spokesperson for Cleverly said in a statement.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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