■ Australia
Killer's parole a long way off
The truck driver sentenced to life in prison for murdering British tourist Peter Falconio in the outback in 2001 was told by a judge yesterday he would ineligible for parole for 28 years. A Northern Territory Supreme Court jury in Darwin found Bradley Murdoch guilty on Tuesday of murdering Falconio and abducting and assaulting his British girlfriend Joanne Lees on the Stuart Highway in the Australian outback in July 2001. During the formal sentencing hearing yesterday, Judge Brian Martin said Falconio's murder and the attack on Lees was "nothing short of cowardly in the extreme."
■ Hong Kong
Protesters praise police
Despite being sprayed with pepper foam and clubbed with truncheons, South Korea's militant farmers have nothing but praise for their adversaries in the Hong Kong police force. The farmers have been at the forefront of anti-globalization protests over the past few days near the WTO meeting here which have on occasion turned violent. But farmer and protester Lee Ha-young said the police treated them with far more compassion than police back home. "I am very impressed with the Hong Kong police. The Korean and Hong Kong police are very different," he said. Lee said one of the farmers hurt his fingers trying to erect a banner and police provided speedy help. "The police rushed over to him and gave him first aid," he said.
■ India
Cold snap leaves 19 dead
The death toll from the severe cold wave sweeping across northern India has mounted to 19, news reports said yesterday. Four deaths were reported from the Uttar Pradesh state since Wednesday, the NDTV network reported. The state has been the worst-affected by the bitter cold, accounting for all the fatalities. Most of those who succumbed to the cold were homeless people. The weather officials said the cold wave conditions have intensified and people should brace for a harsh winter. People in Jammu and Kashmir who lost their homes in the Oct. 8 temblor have been suffering in temporary shelters at sub-zero temperatures.
■ Malaysia
Man arrested for fake dowry
A Malaysian man was arrested shortly after his wedding for giving fake notes as a dowry to his wife's family, a newspaper reported on Wednesday. The 37-year-old groom who claimed to be a consultant had wooed the daughter of a prominent politician from the eastern state of Kelantan and she agreed to marry him, the New Straits Times said. During the wedding on Monday, he presented 8,000 ringgit (US$2,100) to his wife's family as the dowry. Suspicion was aroused when the family started counting the money after the wedding because the texture and color of the new 100-ringgit notes was different from other bills.
■ Malaysia
Teen electrocutes himself
A 16-year-old boy committed suicide by wrapping exposed electrical wires around his wrist, a newspaper reported yesterday. The parents of Yap Way Cheong, who lived in suburban Kuala Lumpur, found his body early on Wednesday after hearing a piercing scream coming from his room, followed by the electricity shutting off in the house, the Sun said. His father, who declined to be named, said that night he had lectured his computer-loving son about cutting the time he spent every day playing video games but was baffled by his suicide.
■ Cyprus
Nude teacher prank probed
A raunchy picture of a Cypriot teacher in a state of undress was surreptitiously downloaded from her mobile telephone and sent to hundreds of pupils. The picture made the rounds at the school in the port town of Limassol on Tuesday after the teacher left her phone unattended by her desk. But the prank was not appreciated by parents or teachers, and police have launched an investigation into the incident. "The police have been summoned, there is a patrol car at the school and the crime department are here to take fingerprints off the mobile phone," the head of the parents' association said.
■ Norway
Woman wins farm
With no heirs, the late Gunnar Bergsrud found another way to pass his beloved farm on to a new generation, with a lottery among the young people of his village. Bergsrud died earlier this year at the age of 89, and asked in his will that his farm be passed on to a young person in Hedalen, a village in the southern Norway's mountains, who dreamed of farming. "If several people express interest, then it should be decided by drawing lots," the will said. About 30 people between aged 15 to 35 signed up, with the drawing held on Wednesday in the local district court. "I'm stunned. I never dreamed it would be me," the 35-year-old winner Monica Aasli told the Oslo newspaper Verdens Gang.
■ Zimbabwe
Mugabe speeches on sale
He may be revered by some and reviled by others but Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's skills as an orator are rarely in doubt, prompting a local record company to put his speeches on tape for "good home entertainment," a newspaper reported yesterday. The compilation is entitled Mugabe Speaks and is to be released by recording firm Gramma Records, the state-controlled Herald said. Minister of Policy Implementation Webster Shamu said the recordings "would not only provide good home entertainment but would be useful to scholars," the paper said.
■ Israel
God gets mail
God's got mail. Postal workers on Wednesday dropped off hundreds of letters addressed to God at the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site. "This place is the holiest place for the Jews, and it is the first gate for prayers. That's why a prayer in this place is important and these notes are important," said Shmuel Rabinovitch, chief rabbi at the site. The Israeli postal service sorts over 2 million pieces of mail daily, and inevitably some of those letters come addressed to the Holy Land, Jesus or God. Rather than consign the letters to bins of undeliverable mail, letters addressed to God are collected and deposited at the Western Wall a few times a year.
■ Italy
Coffins used to move drugs
Sicilian police said on Wednesday that they had broken up a ring that smuggled drugs by hiding them in hearses carrying coffins. They said four people were arrested, including the owner of a funeral home. The gang moved the drugs around the Sicilian capital of Palermo by hiding them in false bottoms of hearses carrying coffins, either empty or full, they said. Police code-named the operation "mahogany" after the type of wood usually used to make coffins in Italy.
■ Brazil
Mayor wants to outlaw death
There's no more room to bury the dead, they can't be cremated and laws forbid a new cemetery in the small town of Biritiba Mirim. So the mayor has proposed an intriguing solution: outlaw death. Mayor Roberto Pereira da Silva's bill is meant to protest federal decrees that have barred a new or expanded cemetery in the town of 28,000 people. "Of course the bill is laughable, unconstitutional, and will never be approved," said an aide to the mayor. "But can you think of a better marketing strategy ... to persuade the government to modify the environmental legislation that is barring us from building a new cemetery?" A 2003 decree by the National Environment Council bars new or expanded cemeteries in permanent preservation areas or in areas with high water tables.
■ United States
Amish duped by prostitute
A 75-year-old Amish widower in Ohio, afraid his church community would find out about him seeking sex from a prostitute, was scammed out of more than US$67,000 by the prostitute and her boyfriend, a prosecutor says. Jake Byler gave the pair the money because they had convinced him that photos of Byler and the prostitute would appear on the Internet, the prosecutor said. Kimberly Webber, 35, and Patrick Lansdowne, 41, were indicted on Tuesday on six felony charges, including extortion, theft from an elderly person and burglary.
■ Russia
Fewer fire deaths this year
More than 15,000 people have died in residential fires this year, a drop of 3.9 percent compared with last, RIA-Novosti news agency reported on Wednesday. It cited Emergency Situations Ministry statistics which recorded more than 204,000 fires between January and this month. The number of fire injuries dropped by 3.8 percent, the agency said, however, the number of children dying in fires this year rose to 614 -- an increase of 3.5 percent.
■ United States
Student leader robs bank
A Lehigh University class president accused of robbing an Allentown, Pennsylvania, bank had a gambling problem and had lost about US$5,000, his lawyer said. Greg Hogan, 19, the son of a Baptist minister in Ohio, handed a note to a teller at the bank around 3pm last Friday, saying he had a gun and wanted money, authorities said. Police said he got away with $2,871. Hogan was picked up at his fraternity house later that day. His lawyer said Hogan had become addicted to online gambling. He faces a preliminary hearing Jan. 31.
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