Pompeo visits Belarus in bid to normalise ties
MINSK • US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo travelled to Belarus yesterday, seeking to “normalise” ties at a time when relations between Minsk and its traditional ally Russia are under strain. The United States and the European Union have been frequent critics of authoritarian rule and the human rights record in Belarus.
But Western powers have lifted most sanctions on Belarus since President Alexander Lukashenko released political prisoners and showed more tolerance for political opposition.
REUTERS
Hanging of 4 in Delhi rape case postponed
DELHI • The hanging of four men scheduled yesterday for a notorious gang rape and murder on a Delhi bus in 2012 has been postponed, a court ruled on Friday.
Four men were convicted of the brutal attack on Ms Jyoti Singh. A fifth, the suspected ringleader, was found dead in jail in a suspected suicide, while a 17-year-old accomplice spent three years in a juvenile detention centre.
The delay came about because some of the men still have legal options to appeal against their sentences.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Two men killed in Japan avalanches
TOKYO • Two people, one of them a British man, were killed separately yesterday as two avalanches struck mountains in Japan, local officials and media said.
The 34-year-old Briton was caught in an avalanche on northern Hokkaido island while skiing with two other people, a local official said. The remaining two skiers – another British national and a Japanese – were unhurt.
In the other case, a man was killed after he was hit by another avalanche near a ski resort in Nagano, central Japan, local media reported.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
African swine fever outbreak in Mindanao
MANILA • An outbreak of African swine fever (ASF) in Davao Occidental province in the southern Philippines has killed more than 1,000 pigs, local officials in the Mindanao region said yesterday.
“This is the first ASF case in the entire Mindanao (island),” said regional director Liza Mazo, of the Office of Civil Defence in the Davao region.
XINHUA