■ Australia
Child allowed sex change
The Family Court has allowed a 13-year-old girl to undergo hormone treatment that will make her a boy -- a controversial decision that has ignited public debate. Tuesday's ruling is the first time an Australian child has been given legal approval to undergo sex-change hormone treatment because of psychiatric issues. The girl, who under Family Court rules can only be known as "Alex," will also receive psychiatric care and have surgery when she becomes an adult at 18. Alex regards herself as being male after being brought up as a boy by her now-dead father and being rejected by her mother. She has already begun hormone treatment to prevent menstruation and feminization of her body.
■ Hong Kong
Mobile phone explodes
A man was injured as the Nokia mobile phone he was using exploded, police said yesterday. Restaurant worker Chan Tin-hon, 21, was chatting on his Nokia 3310 phone in a queue outside a bank machine in the Shatin district when it blew up on Monday afternoon. Chan was treated in hospital for
burns to his hand and face, a police spokesman said. Bank customers ran for cover when the explosion took place. Nokia spokeswoman Emily Hung said there had been similar incidents involving the model in other countries. All of the cases involved mobile phones using sub-standard, non-Nokia batteries, she said.
■ India
Banana juice liberated
Indian scientists say they have unpeeled one of the great mysteries of the soft-drinks world -- how to extract juice from bananas cheaply and simply. The breakthrough could lead to fizzy banana juice sold in cans and bottles, banana nectar and banana wine, they say. Despite an 85-percent water content, scientists have long struggled to extract juice from the bendy fruit because when mashed it simply turns to pulp. Costly and complicated techniques were developed to break down walls storing the moisture using enzymes. The technique extracts about 85 percent of the fruit's juice while the solid leftover, could be made into several confectionery items, the scientists said.
■ Singapore
Priest stole millions
A Singaporean Catholic priest pleaded guilty yesterday to stealing S$5.1 million (US$3 million) of church funds during an eight-year crime spree. Father Joachim Kang reversed his claims of innocence three weeks into his trial after prosecutors dropped 13 of an original 19 charges of criminal breach of trust. The six outstanding charges relate to Kang transferring the money from the Church of St Teresa, where he was parish priest, into his bank accounts and unit trusts between 1994 and 2002. Prosecutors allege Kang, 55, used the money to buy computers for two "god-daughters" and register an S$835,000 apartment with one of them.
■ Kyrgyzstan
President slams officials
President Askar Akayev on Tuesday harshly criticized the former Soviet republic's law enforcement agencies for being rife with corruption and falling down on the job in fighting crime. "Criminal networks spread with impunity into state agencies and try to take power and terrorize the state," Akayev said at a meeting with heads of law enforcement agencies. Akayev said the high crime rate was a "serious destabilizing factor" for the country.
■ Serbia
Milosevic wants Clinton
Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic has filed a list of 1,631 people, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former US president Bill Clinton, whom he wants to testify at his war crimes trial, a lawyer assisting him confirmed Tuesday in Belgrade. The list also includes former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, attorney Zdenko Tomanovic said. Milosevic wants them summoned to testify in the part of the trial allocated to the defense although they would be "hostile witnesses," Tomanovic said. The document justifying each of the witnesses runs to around 5,000 pages, but it would be up to the judges to allow or reject them.
■ Brazil
Jobless man immolates self
An unemployed Brazilian set himself on fire in front of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's office after saying he had requested an audience with the leader, a hospital spokeswoman said on Tuesday. Jose Antonio Andrade Souza, 30, was in stable condition suffering from second and third-degree burns over 85 percent of his body, said the spokeswoman from the North Wing Regional Hospital, which specializes in burns. "He said that after trying to gain an audience with the president, he went to the bus station, bought one liter of ethanol, and set fire to himself," she said.
■ Canada
Spring election unlikely
Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin looks increasingly unlikely to call a spring election, as originally planned, because his party has sunk in the polls in the wake of a government spending scandal. The latest survey, an Ipsos Reid poll published in Tuesday's Globe and Mail, showed another decline for Martin's Liberal Party and cemented expectations he would lose his majority in Parliament if an election were held now. Liberal support dropped to 35 percent early this month from 38 percent late last month, according to Ipsos Reid. The Conservative Party saw its support rise to 28 percent from 26 percent, while the left-leaning New Democrats rose to 18 percent from 17 percent.
■ United States
Student in key terror trial
A Saudi graduate student accused of setting up Web sites to help Islamic militants recruit followers went on trial in a key test of a provision in federal law that bars the giving of expert advice to terrorist groups. A jury of eight women and four men was seated to hear the case against Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, a 34-year-old University of Idaho student working on his doctorate in computer science. He is charged with three counts of aiding terrorism. He is also charged with visa fraud and making false statements.
■ Macedonia
Macedonia votes
Macedonians were voting yesterday for a successor to the late President Boris Trajkovski, who was killed in a plane crash two months ago. Four candidates including the country's center-left Prime Minister Branko Crvenkovski were competing to become the third head of state since independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. About 1.6 million of the country's 2 million citizens are registered to vote in the first round. A runoff will be held on April 28 if, as expected, yesterday's voting produces no outright winner. "It's a test of democracy. The elections should show how far this country has matured," said one Western envoy in Macedonia.
■ Hungary
Arrests in museum plot
Police detained three Arabs on Tuesday in connection with a planned attack on a Jewish museum, just two days before Israel's president was to inaugurate Budapest's Holocaust Memorial Center. Police said the main suspect was a 42-year-old Hungarian citizen of Palestinian origin who works as a dentist and is the spiritual head of a small Islamic group in Budapest. Two others, both Syrians, were being held for questioning only, they said. Law enforcement officials denied that visiting Israeli President Moshe Katsav had been targeted for assassination. Still, the plot heightened jitters about possible plans to retaliate for Israel's assassination of the founder of the radical Palestinian Hamas movement. Israel targeted Sheik Ahmed Yassin in Gaza on March 22.
■ Israel
Gun ring busted
Israeli and Egyptian police have smashed a major gunrunning ring in which Egyptians and Israeli Bedouin Arabs smuggled weapons through the desert to Palestinian militant groups in the West Bank, Israeli police said Tuesday. The two-month police operation climaxed over the weekend with the arrest of the Egyptian ringleader, Mahmoud Sarawka, as he was digging up a cached shipment of guns on the Israeli side of the border, police told reporters. "He is the one who coordinated communications with the Israelis," Yoram Levy, head of the detective squad covering the southern Israel Negev desert, told Israel TV.
■ United States
Chef decapitated wife
A New York chef was sentenced on Tuesday to 15 years to life in prison for strangling his wife, sawing off her head and stuffing her body in a suitcase. Police say Oscar Pilamunga, 25, a chef at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan, became enraged in May last year when his wife, Beatrice Yually, 22, said she was leaving him for another man. He choked her, cut off her head with a handsaw, put her body in a suitcase and dumped it on a street, police said. Pilamunga said he tossed the head in a trash bin, though it has not been found. The victim sold ices on the street. The couple, who came from Ecuador, married when she was 13.
■ United States
Sept. 11 cars stolen
Hundreds of cars were destroyed when the World Trade Center collapsed. But several US Secret Service cars listed as "crushed," prosecutors said Tuesday, were actually stolen by the head of the agency's motor pool at 7 World Trade Center. The man, William Bennette, 52, confessed to giving cars to his mother and daughter after creating false paperwork for them, according to a complaint by the Secret Service unsealed Tuesday. Bennette pleaded not guilty Tuesday to theft of government property -- five cars worth a total of US$35,000.
■ United States
Jackson investigated again
Detectives are investigating a new allegation of child abuse against Michael Jackson involving a person who claims to have been victimized in the late 1980s, a police spokeswoman said. Jackson has pleaded innocent to child molestation charges involving another alleged victim in Santa Barbara County. Jackson attorney Benjamin Brafman said Tuesday he was unaware of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) investigation. "We have never been informed by the LAPD of any investigation that they are conducting of Michael Jackson," he said.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
‘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