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.
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
RSS