ALMATY, Kazakhstan (AFP) -- A student wielding an axe and a knife on Monday wounded three students at a middle school in the Central Asian country of Kazakhstan, authorities said. The alleged attacker, who was later detained, “came out of the toilet with a knife and an axe,” said an official in Petropavlovsk, a city with a population of some 200,000 near the Russian border, according to the official news agency Kazinform.  Kazinform said two of the injured students were hospitalized and the other was treated on the scene. The two boys and one girl were all conscious, it added. The regional prosecutor’s office said proceedings had been opened into attempted murder and that the suspect had been undergoing psychiatric monitoring prior to the attack. 

 

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MANILA (AFP) -- A Chinese security vessel shone a “military-grade laser light” at a Philippine patrol boat in the disputed South China Sea, temporarily blinding crew members, the Philippine coastguard said Monday. The incident happened on February 6 nearly 20 kilometers (12 miles) from Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratly Islands, where Philippine marines are stationed, the Philippine Coast Guard said in a statement. China’s foreign ministry said the coast guard conducted actions according to law. The incident occurred days after the United States and the Philippines agreed to resume joint patrols in the sea and struck a deal to give U.S. troops access to another four military bases in the Southeast Asian country. The deal earlier this month brings to nine the total number of Philippine bases accessible to U.S. forces.

 

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MOSCOW (Reuters) -- Russia supplied India with around $13 billion of arms during the past five years, and New Delhi has orders placed with Moscow for weapons and military equipment exceeding $10 billion, Russian state news agencies reported late on Sunday. India is the world’s biggest buyer of Russian arms, accounting for around 20% of Moscow’s current order book, and New Delhi has not explicitly condemned Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called for dialogue and diplomacy to solve the conflict, now in its 12th month. Scores of Western countries imposed sanctions on Russia, including on arms, in response to the offensive. India, China and some Southeast Asian countries have maintained their interest in buying Russian arms, according to Dmitry Shugayev, the head of Russia’s Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation, the agencies reported.Annual arms exports were about $14-15 billion, and the order book has remained steady at around $50 billion, Interfax reported.

 

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BEIJING (Dispatches) -- China’s top diplomat Wang Yi will visit France, Italy and Hungary this month, the Chinese foreign ministry said on Monday at a regular press briefing. Wang will also attend the 59th Munich Security Conference and deliver a speech at China session to communicate the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security advocated by President Xi Jinping and share China’s stance on major global issues.

 

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LISBON (Reuters) -- At least 4,815 children were sexually abused by members of the Portuguese Catholic Church - mostly priests - over the past 70 years, a commission investigating the issue said in its final report on Monday. Most of the perpetrators - 77% - were priests and most of the victims were men, the head of the commission, child psychiatrist Pedro Strecht said, adding that they were abused in Catholic schools, priests’ homes, confessionals, among other locations. The Portuguese commission started its work in January last year after a report in France revealed around 3,000 priests and religious officials sexually abused over 200,000 children.  The abuse allegations have come from people from various backgrounds, from every region of the country and also from Portuguese nationals living in other countries in Europe, Africa and the Americas. The commission, which says it is independent, was financed by the Catholic Church. Asked by Reuters in December 2021 if that could be a threat to the commission’s independence, Strecht said he would be the first to walk out and denounce if the church intervened in the process. 

 

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MOSCOW (Reuters) -- Ramzan Kadyrov, leader of the Russian region of Chechnya, said in an interview aired on Monday that Russia would achieve its goals in Ukraine by the end of the year and it would be wrong to negotiate with President Volodymyr Zelensky. Kadyrov’s forces have played a prominent role in the war in Ukraine since Russia invaded almost a year ago, and he has forged an informal alliance with the increasingly prominent Wagner militia chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and other nationalist hardliners who back the war. In an interview broadcast on state television’s flagship Rossiya-1 channel, he said Russia had the forces to take the capital Kyiv - from which it was driven back in the early weeks of the war - and that it needed to capture Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv and its main port, Odesa. “I believe that, by the end of the year, we will 100% complete the task set for us today,” Kadyrov said. With neither side prepared for concessions, there has appeared to be little prospect of peace talks since the early months of the war.