■ China
Man tears teacher's ear off
An enraged grandfather stormed into a school in southern China and ripped off the ear of a woman teacher in revenge for her clipping his granddaughter's ear, a news report said yesterday. The attack took place after the teacher mildly clipped the girl's ear for running around in the classroom, the Hong Kong edition of the China Daily said. When he learned of the incident, the grandfather stormed into the school in Wuhua county, Guangdong Province, and tore the teacher's ear off, the newspaper reported. The teacher was rushed to a nearby hospital where surgeons managed to reattach the ear.
■ Vietnam
Police seize explosives
Police have seized 930kg of explosives and arrested three men, an officer said yesterday. A van, driven by 48-year-old Pham Dinh Bi, was stopped by traffic police in a town 58km south of Hanoi last Thursday, said a senior officer who asked not to be named. "Bi then tried to bribe the arresting officers with seven dollars, but failed," the police officer said. Police also discovered 2,000 fuses in the van. "All three people are now being kept at the provincial police station for further investigations as none of them admitted owning the explosives and fuses," according to the traffic officer.
■ Singapore
Impostor-thief gets jail time
A Myanmar man has been sentenced by a Singapore court to four years in prison and six lashes with a cane after posing as a flight attendant to pick up men in nightclubs and then stealing from them, a newspaper reported yesterday. Chan Zo Zo, 24, prowled Singapore's nightclubs to find his victims, calling himself "Michelle" and claiming he was a flight attendant, The Straits Times newspaper reported. Chan then swiped credit cards, cash and cell phones from the men while they were asleep in a spree that began in September last year and ended in August this year, the report said. Among his victims were two Britons, a Japanese and a Belgian man, the paper said.
■ Hong Kong
Maid wins compensation
A Sri Lankan maid jailed after being falsely accused of stealing a pair of sandals from her Hong Kong employer has won US$30,000 compensation, a report said yesterday. Godagan Deniyalage Prema spent 19 days in prison after being convicted in 2002 of stealing the sandals before being released on bail pending her appeal, the South China Morning Post reported. At a hearing Monday, a judge ruled her employer and employment agency conspired to prosecute Godagan for stealing the sandals, which were in fact a gift from her employer.
■ New Zealand
Refugees denied asylum
The government will not accept a high profile family of asylum seekers who are being deported from Australia, which has refused to accept them as refugees, Immigration Minister Paul Swain said yesterday. Swain said he would not consider a call to take Ali and Roqia Bakhtiyari and their six children because the New Zealand government would not interfere in Australia's refugee determination process, Radio New Zealand reported. Centacare, a Catholic welfare agency based in Adelaide, wrote to Swain after Australian Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said that the family, which has had 20 legal applications for asylum refused during four years in Australia, should leave.
■ France
Brothel visits spark row
An internationally renowned public prosecutor is under investigation for allegedly stealing a colleague's credit card and using it to pay for visits to a German brothel. Pierre Hontang, the public prosecutor of the south-western French town of Bayonne, is accused of having paid for the services of a prostitute at a conference at which he gave a keynote speech on the "fundamental ethical principles for the public prosecution service." The CSM, the governing council of France's magistrature, confirmed yesterday that the justice ministry had asked it to suspend Hontang with immediate effect.
■ Sweden
Thief demands painkillers
A man brandishing a gun-like object held up a drugstore in the small southwestern Swedish town of Bollebygd and made off with his booty: a package of headache tablets, Swedish media reported on Monday. The man walked into the pharmacy, pulled out an object that resembled a gun and said "This is a robbery," pharmacy employees said. The bandit then said he needed some Treo comp, a brand of headache and pain relief pills, and was given a small package before making his getaway. "He wasn't aggressive or anything, apparently it all went very smoothly. According to the pharmacists it's possible that many customers didn't even notice that it was a robbery," said a spokesman for the Apoteket pharmacy chain.
■ Russia
Freedom in the balance
Russia has restricted rights to such an extent that it has joined the countries that are not free for the first time since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, Freedom House said on Monday, marking Moscow's march away from the Western democracies it has embraced as diplomatic partners. "This setback for freedom represented the year's most important political trend," the US-based non-governmental organization wrote in its annual study. Freedom House noted increased Kremlin control over national television and other media, limitations on local government, and parliamentary and presi-dential elections it said were neither free nor fair.
■ United States
Dancers to wear permits
Topless dancers in San Antonio will have a little more to wear after the city council on Friday ordered them to carry permits while performing. The council, attempting to curb the number of clubs in the city, also banned nude dancing and "lap dancing" and ordered performers to keep a decent distance from patrons, drawing a vow from clubs to fight the restrictions in court. The rules require that dancers stay at least 1m from club patrons and wear the US$50-permits while working. The driver's license-sized permits may be attached to dancers'
G-strings, or to bracelets around their ankles.
■ Vatican City
Basilica opens coffee bar
St Peter's Basilica now has its own rooftop coffee bar. The bar on the roof of Christendom's largest church opened several months ago without fanfare but even many Vatican officials did not know about it until Monday when an Italian paper splashed the "discovery" on its front page. Located on the terrace at the base of the cupola designed by Michelangelo, it commands a breathtaking view of St Peter's Square all the way to the Tiber River and beyond.
■ United States
Prez-menacer pleads guilty
A woman pleaded guilty to two counts of threatening US President George W. Bush. A grand jury indicted Catherine M. Guertin, 24, in August and she was arrested the next month. Her guilty plea was entered Monday as part of an agreement with federal prosecutors, according to court documents. The threats were made in May while Guertin was living in Independence, the indictment says. The woman allegedly threatened Bush by saying, "I want him gone" and "If I ever have a gun, I will shoot him between the eyes." She also allegedly wrote statements threatening the president. The maximum penalty for conviction of threatening the president is five years in prison per count.
■ United States
Cocaine plane crashes
Authorities called to the scene of a weekend plane crash found no people -- dead or alive -- but they did find US$24 million worth of cocaine. Federal authorities were seeking the pilot, identified as Eugene N. Cobbs, on a charge of possession with intent to distribute cocaine, US Attorney Thomas Johnston said Monday. The Piper Aerostar twin-engine plane crashed in a wooded area around midnight Saturday near the Wheeling-Ohio County Airport, said James Peters, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration. Authorities were searching for a man believed to be Cobbs who was picked up by a motorist near the airport's front entrance.
■ United States
Navy SEAL acquitted
A Navy SEAL has been acquitted of charges that he beat a handcuffed and hooded terror suspect who later died, while a second commando received probation for assaulting another prisoner, attorneys for the men said. The first SEAL was found not guilty of assault and dereliction of duty on Thursday in a nonjudicial proceeding known as a captain's mast, his attorney said on Monday. The other commando was convicted on Friday of assault and received six months probation, his attorney said. The first SEAL was accused of punching and kicking prisoner Manadel al-Jamadi and appearing in a photo in which the hooded and handcuffed detainee was allegedly humiliated.
■ Peru
Corpse-burier arrested
A 25-year-old medical student is suspected in Peru of a series of murders after his arrest, police said Monday. The man reportedly confessed to killing five members of a family in the southern Peruvian region of Tacna and to have buried their bound corpses in the yard of his house. He was arrested over the weekend after allegedly using a hammer to bludgeon to death an electronics dealer following an argument.
■ United States
Snipes challenges NYC court
Action film star Wesley Snipes sued the city, charging that it had no jurisdiction to seek his DNA in a paternity suit filed in Indiana by a woman he said was crack-addicted and mentally ill. The federal suit seeks to nullify a March arrest warrant filed against the 42-year-old star of the Blade trilogy by a New York family court judge, who also is named in the suit, and to prevent Indiana prosecutors from continuing to seek the actor's DNA. Snipes' lawyer, Robert Bernhoft, said his client lives in Orlando, Florida, so New York City had no jurisdiction. An attorney for New York, Emily Sweet, said the suit was being evaluated and she could not comment further.
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
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema