FIJI
George Speight pardoned
Former coup leader George Speight was yesterday granted a presidential pardon and freed after spending 24 years in jail on treason charges. The Corrections Service said that the businessman-turned-putschist was formally granted a pardon along with six others. He was granted clemency on the recommendation of a Mercy Commission that was set up to deal with politically sensitive cases. Speight, a businessman, led a 2000 coup that held then-prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry and lawmakers hostage for 56 days.
NEW CALEDONIA
Two killed during raid
Two people were shot dead during a police operation overnight in the French territory, where unrest began in May between indigenous Kanaks and French loyalists, French media reported yesterday. That brought to 13 the number of people who have died since the start of the crisis that was sparked by a voting reform that was suspended in June.
PAKISTAN
Family forgives officer
The family of a blasphemy suspect killed in custody has forgiven the police officer accused of killing him, saying on Wednesday that they would not press charges “in the name of God.” Abdul Ali, 52, also known as Sakhi Lala, was allegedly shot dead last week in a police station in Quetta by police officer Saayd Mohammad Sarhadi, who had accessed the facility by pretending to be Ali’s relative, police said. “We will not fight the case,” Ali’s son Muhammad Usman told a news conference, sitting with another brother and elders from his tribal clan. “We have forgiven the police officer in the name of God.” One of the elders, Faizullah Noorzai, said that the tribe would disown Ali. “We and our families are the kind of people who would sacrifice their lives for the sake of the Prophet Mohammed and his respect.”
UNITED STATES
Train joyrider arrested
Police have arrested a teenage girl they say was one of two people who took an empty New York City subway train on a brief joyride before they crashed it and fled. They are looking for a male companion they believe was also pictured on the train. Surveillance photographs released by the New York Police Department on Tuesday showed one person dressed all in pink, including a pink shower cap, and another in a blue tank top. Police arrested the 17-year-old girl on Wednesday. They have charged her with criminal mischief and reckless endangerment. The pair boarded an unoccupied train parked at the Briarwood subway station in Queens just after midnight on Thursday last week and somehow got it running, police said in a news release. They crashed it into another parked train and ran, police said. No injuries were reported.
UNITED STATES
Wagon incident hurts 25
About 25 children and adults were injured on Wednesday when a wagon carrying them overturned at an apple orchard in Wisconsin. The children, parents and chaperones were on a field trip to the orchard in Lafayette when one of two wagons being pulled by a tractor turned sideways and rolled over, Chippewa County Sheriff Travis Hakes told reporters. Hakes said the tractor was traveling at a low speed when the wagon rolled over while going downhill. Three people sustained critical injuries, while injuries to five others were considered serious.
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
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
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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