■ China
Hairdresser gets revenge
A hairdresser in central China cut all the hair off a woman customer when she could not pay for her visit to his salon, a news report said yesterday. The woman spent six hours having expensive treatment in the salon in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, before telling the hairdresser that her money had disappeared, according to the Hong Kong edition of the China Daily. The hairdresser's colleagues held the woman down while he cut off her hair after she rang around friends and was unable to raise the money to pay her bill, the newspaper said. The woman is now forced to wear a wig.
■ Australia
Snake smuggler caught
A Swedish man was arrested at Sydney airport trying to smuggle eight dangerous snakes, including four deadly King Cobras, into the country strapped to his legs, Australian officials said yesterday. The 28-year-old arrived late Monday from Thailand and the eight snakes were found in packages strapped to his calves, Justice and Customs Minister Chris Ellison said. King Cobras are the world's largest venomous snakes, growing to an average length of nearly 6m. They are one of the few highly poisonous snakes that are not native to Australia.
■ Japan
Gang of thieves confesses
Sixteen Turkish men and three Japanese have confessed to stealing 65 million yen (US$580,000) from thousands of vending machines in less than a year on a nationwide robbing spree, police said yesterday. Split into units of two to four, the gang traveled along Japanese highways in search of roadside cigarette and soft-drink machines, according to the Gunma prefecture police. Using drills to bust locks, the suspects allegedly emptied out some 10 to 20 machines a night. They are believed to have broken into 2,170 machines from October last year through this month.
■ Australia
Museum thief nabbed
Talk about taking your work home with you. A Sydney museum worker stole thousands of exhibits -- including a stuffed lion -- and displayed them in his home, an anti-corruption board revealed in a report yesterday. Hank van Leeuwen, who worked at the Australian Museum, stole more than 2,000 rare and scientific artifacts between 1997 and last year, according to the report by the Independent Commission Against Corruption. The report said Van Leeuwen even used museum vehicles to remove specimens -- which included skulls, skeletons and skins -- and displayed in his home a large stuffed lion that was first exhibited in the museum in 1911.
■ New zealand
Racist comment flops
New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark yesterday condemned an attack on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan by the country's leading current affairs broadcaster Paul Holmes who called him a "cheeky darkie" on his morning radio show. Dubbing Holmes's comments "completely unacceptable," she said, "It is demeaning of one of the world's top international civil servants and I would not want New Zealand to be in any way associated with such comments." Holmes apologized earlier, saying he "surrendered to baseness" when saying on his daily nationwide Newstalk ZB program that the world was not going to be told how to live by a Ghanaian.
■ Canada
Hells Angels imprisoned
A Montreal court sentenced nine members of the Quebec chapter of the Hell's Angels to prison terms ranging from 10 to 15 years for drug trafficking, gang membership and conspiracy to commit murder. The sentences followed a plea bargain earlier this month in which the men pleaded guilty to the lesser charges in exchange for prosecutors dropping first-degree murder charges. The sentences were added to the 30 months the men have served in prison. Four of the sentenced men belonged to the notorious Nomads branch of the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang. The charges relate to a bloody turf war for control of Quebec's lucrative drug trade in the mid-1990s. Prosecutors alleged that all but one of the 13 murders that were part of the original charges involved the settling of scores. The 13th victim, Serge Hervieux, was killed in a case of mistaken identity.
■ United kingdom
Lockerbie convict appeals
The Libyan intelligence agent jailed for the Lockerbie bombing is asking a Scottish legal commission to review his conviction, his lawyers said Tuesday, claiming they had new evidence. Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi has already lost an appeal of his conviction for the murder of 259 passengers and crew on board Pan Am flight 103 from London to New York, and 11 residents of Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988. Al-Megrahi, who was convicted in 2001 by a special Scottish court in the Netherlands, was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 20 years. A Scottish appeals court upheld the conviction in March last year. He is serving his sentence in Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow, Scotland.
■ Denmark
Power returns to 4 million
Power was back on late Tuesday, seven hours after almost four million Swedes and Danes were without electricity in a massive power outage that included Copenhagen and the southern Swedish city of Malmo. Restoration of power had been relatively quick in the southern tip of Sweden, but took far longer on the Danish vacation island of Bornholm, the island of Zealand with the cities of Copenhagen and Roskilde, and southern Lolland-Falster island. Officials said the blackout was caused by faulty switching at the Swedish nuclear power station of Oskarshamn. A knock-on effect left millions without power, halting public transport and work. Police and fire rescue services were swamped with calls.
■ Yemen
US role questioned
The US-led "war on terror" has caused a worsening of human rights in Yemen, with the authorities there holding almost 200 people without trial in an effort to placate the Americans, according to a report published yesterday. In the months following the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, Yemen embarked upon mass arrests, detentions and the secret deportation of foreign nationals, Amnesty International reported. In the 1990s, Yemen became a popular refuge for Islamists, many with Afghan connections. Kate Allen, Amnesty's UK director, said: "The US's role in Yemen has been deeply questionable, with the FBI allegedly involved in mass arrests, the CIA conducting illegal killings with a `drone' last year, and US authorities blocking trials of suspects in the sinking of the USS Cole three years ago."
■ Netherlands
War sponsors investigated
War crimes prosecutors of the International Criminal Court will investigate businesses in at least 29 countries suspected of financing ethnic violence in the Congo, the chief prosecutor said on Tuesday. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who described the violence in Congo as the "most important case since the Second World War," said exposing international money flows will be an important part of his work. An estimated 2.5 to 3.2 million people have been killed in Congo's five-year war, which broke out in August 1998.
■ United States
Translator charged
An Air Force translator for suspected terrorists at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp tried to send classified information about the prisoners to his native Syria, military authorities charge. Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi is behind bars at a California Air Force base, facing 32 criminal charges. The most serious -- espionage and aiding the enemy -- could carry the death penalty. Military authorities accuse al-Halabi, 24, of sending e-mail with information about the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay "to unauthorized person or persons whom he, the accused, knew to be the enemy." The Air Force documents detailing the charges do not say who "the enemy" is.
■ Iraq
Slain councillor worse
Aquila al-Hashimi, one of three women on Iraq's Governing Council, has taken a turn for the worse, four days after she was shot in a brazen daylight assassination attempt, a council spokesman said yesterday. Al-Hashimi is being treated at a US military hospital in the compound at Saddam Hussein's former Republican Palace in central Baghdad where the US-led coalition had its headquarters. Al-Hashimi had been preparing to leave for this week's UN General Assembly meeting in New York when she was gunned down on Saturday by six men in a pickup truck as she drove in a two-car convoy near her home in west Baghdad. Saddam Hussein loyalists are blamed.
■ United States
Italian PM honored
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) honored Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi despite condemnation by several Nobel laureates, who said it was inappropriate because of Berlusconi's recent remarks minimizing the misdeeds of Italy's World War II dictator Benito Mussolini. Berlusconi was toasted by several world and business leaders on Tuesday night at the Plaza Hotel in New York. ADL National Director Abraham Foxman acknowledged the controversy while giving Berlusconi the group's distinguished statesman award. The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights organization, was honoring Berlusconi because of his support for the US war on Iraq and for Israel.
■ United States
Williams' sister buried
The slain sister of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams was buried on Friday in a private ceremony, the family said on Tuesday. Yetunde Price was gunned down on Sept. 14 in the crime-ridden Los Angeles suburb of Compton, not far from where her two youngest sisters first played the game that would rocket them to international fame. Venus, 23, and Serena Williams, 21, are the youngest of five daughters raised by Richard Williams and Oracene Price.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in