■ United Kingdom
Precious penny sets record
PHOTO: AFP
A 1,200-year-old Anglo-Saxon penny on Wednesday sold for £230,000 (US$409,000, 33,000), setting what the auction house said was a new world record for the most expensive British coin. Spink auction house had expected the 4.33g gold coin to fetch between £120,000 and £150,000 Allan Davisson, an American collector, purchased the coin, which was found by an amateur searcher using a metal detector near the River Ivel in Bedfordshire, north of London, in 2001. It is the only known coin to bear the name of King Coenwulf of Mercia, who ruled a region of southern England from 796 to 821.
■ United Kingdom
Fugitive says he ate woman
A British fugitive held in Spain over the brutal murder of a British woman has claimed in a letter to the Daily Mirror that he killed her, then ate her, the mass circulation newspaper said yesterday. Writing from his prison cell on the Costa Blanca, Paul Durant, 44, who was arrested in February over the killing of Karen Durrell, 41, confessed to having killed her, then cut her up in the town of Calpe in an fit of cannibalism. "After I killed her, I cut her body into small parts, eating what part of her I found eatable," he wrote, according to the report.
■ Germany
Cannibalism case found
Police are investigating a killing in Berlin which appears to be a repeat case of cannibalism linked to sex, media reports said yesterday. A 33-year-old piano teacher was found dead in an apartment in the city's troubled Neukoelln district, police confirmed. The man, who had been stabbed to death with a screwdriver, was sawed into pieces and his internal organs including the heart and liver had been put into a refrigerator, news reports said. A 41-year-old unemployed painter gave himself up to police and confessed to the killing.
■ Russia
Prosecutors charge reporter
Russian prosecutors have launched a criminal case against Yury Bagrov, an Associated Press reporter known for his investigative work in the volatile North Caucasus region, officials said yesterday. "He unlawfully received a passport," said Aslan Cherchisov, a deputy prosecutor in North Ossetia where the 28-year-old reporter is based. Prosecutors contend that Bagrov knowingly used a false document when he applied to switch his Soviet passport for a Russian one, according to a copy of a notification that a criminal case has been launched, seen by AFP. Bagrov denied the charge.
■ South Africa
President supports deputy
South African President Thabo Mbeki's Cabinet made a public show of support for Deputy President Jacob Zuma on Wednesday, a few days before a high-profile corruption trial of his financial adviser is due to open. The trial of businessman Shabir Shaik starting in Durban on Monday will be closely watched for its impact on the political career of Zuma, who is widely seen as a potential successor to Mbeki after 2009. Zuma, who has been investigated for corruption in connection with a 1999 arms deal but never charged, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
■ China
Teacher kills four students
A primary school teacher stabbed four children to death and wounded 12 pupils and four colleagues in the fourth attack of its kind in recent weeks, the Beijing News said yesterday. After attacking the children in the grade one class, the 28-year-old briefly held 64 older pupils hostage, the daily said. The bloodshed at the school in Hunan Province occurred last Thursday and was over within 10 minutes, the paper said. "Many class-mates were too frightened to cry," one child was quoted as saying. The suspect was arrested after negotiations with a county government official and all the hostages were freed, the paper said.
■ Japan
Yahoo stops banknote sale
What was claimed to be a sample of the new ¥1,000 bill was Thursday bid up to ¥9.9 billion (US$89 million) in an Internet auction before the auction was called off. The "sample" banknote, whose authenticity is questioned, was put on the Japanese edition of the Yahoo auction service on Oct. 4, drawing a starting price of ¥5,000, said a Yahoo Japan spokesman. Following a barrage of media reports, bids for the sample banknote skyrocketed to ¥9,900,061,000 by 11:41am yesterday, when Yahoo Japan deleted it to prevent massive access from causing system glitches. The National Printing Bureau said it was "impossible" to have a sample bill leaving its premises. Newly designed banknotes of ¥1,000, ¥5,000 and ¥10,000 go into circula-tion next month.
■ Australia
Officer suspended for porn
A sex crimes detective has been suspended over allegations he owned child pornography, police said yesterday, as they revealed that two more suspects in the country's biggest crack-down on Internet pedophilia rings had committed suicide. New South Wales state police commissioner Ken Moroney said two Sydney officers, a detective senior constable and a constable, were suspended and their home computers seized. "I must indicate that the mere fact that New South Wales officers have been allegedly found in possession of child pornography is in itself devastating to me as the commissioner of police," Moroney said. More 200 people have been arrested in the crackdown on child pornography and hundreds more arrests are expected to follow, detectives say.
■ The Philippines
General lied about age
A military committee yesterday recommended the filing of criminal charges against a general who allegedly faked his birthday in order to extend his service beyond the compulsory retirement age. Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Lucero, an armed forces spokesman, said the committee found that Major General Ralph Flores falsely declared his birthday as March 30, 1949, when he was actually born three years earlier. "He was supposed to have retired on March 30, 2002 upon attaining 56 years of age," Lucero said. The judge advocate general suggested that a civil suit be filed against Flores to collect the salaries he received after his supposed retirement in 2002.
■ Nepal
Rebels kill four
Suspected Maoists killed four security force members in two incidents on Wednesday in remote areas of Nepal and bombed a forestry office on the out-skirts of Kathmandu, police said yesterday. Two of the security force members were shot dead one day after they had been kidnapped while on patrol.
■ United States
Brazil to shoot down planes
Washington is likely to help Brazil in its plan to shoot down planes suspected of smuggling drugs after determining it has enough safeguards to prevent accidental killings, senior US officials said on Wednesday. The air drug interdiction program is controversial because Peru's air force mistakenly fired on a small plane in 2001, killing a US missionary and her daughter. The Peruvian jet was alerted to the presence of the missionary plane by another plane carrying an American CIA-contracted crew and a Peruvian liaison officer.
■ Chile
Pinochet coup to be probed
The lower house of Congress in Chile decided Wednesday to create a committee to investigate undercover operations by the CIA which came to light when US intelligence documents were declassified. The committee will have six months to prove whether the CIA violated "the limits of sovereignty, national self-determination and respect for bilateral relations." Two reports drafted by US Congress have shown that the CIA intervened in Chile to destabilize the government of elected socialist president Salvador Allende and later backed the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet after he toppled the Allende government in a brutal putsch in 1973.
■ United States
Abductor slashes his lawyer
A man on trial in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for taking a kindergartner hostage slashed his public defender's face with a razor blade in court on Wednesday. The defense was about to rest its case when Barbette Williams wrapped his arms around lawyer Bert Garraway and cut him on the neck and cheek. Officials said the wounds were not life-threatening, and deputies were investigating how Williams got the razor into court. On Tuesday, Williams threatened to shoot the judge, the prosecutor and the court-appointed attorney. Williams, 48, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity in the second-degree kidnapping and attempted first-degree murder of Ben Smith, 6, who was taken from his class in March 2003.
■ Cuba
Wives protest detainment
The wives of jailed Cuban dissidents camped out for a second day in Havana's Revolution Square on Wednesday vowing to stay until the husband of one woman was moved to a hospital for treatment. The unprecedented protest by six women close to the symbolic rallying point of Cuba's communist-run government continued under the watchful gaze of Cuban police, who did not intervene.The officials told Soler she would not get a final reply as long as foreign media continued covering her protest. "This is our right. We also called the Cuban press, but they did not come," she said.
■ United States
Names misspelled on mural
Changes were needed after a US$40,000 ceramic mural was unveiled outside the California city of Livermore's new library misspelled the names of Einstein, Shakespeare, Vincent Van Gogh, Michelangelo and seven other historical figures. Council members voted on Monday to authorize paying another US$6,000 plus expenses to fix the errors. Artist Maria Alquilar offered no apologies for the 11 misspellings among the 175 names. The mistakes wouldn't even register with a true artisan, Alquilar claimed. "The people that (sic) are into humanities, and are into Blake's concept of enlightenment, they are not looking at the words," she said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing