■ China
82 struck down last month
Lightning strikes killed 82 people across China last month, a Chinese newspaper reported yesterday after several nights of violent storms in the capital, Beijing. The death toll was recorded across 20 provinces, with 22 people killed in the eastern Jiangsu Province alone, the International Business Daily said. It said the death toll marked an increase on June last year. "The main reasons for the deaths are the lack of lightning avoidance measures, equipment and knowledge," the International Business Daily said.
■ China
Fujian braces for Bilis
China evacuated some 256,000 people and canceled flights in the southeastern province of Fujian as Tropical Storm Bilis approached yesterday, state media said. Beginning on Thursday, Fujian officials called 42,000 ships back to port and canceled at least 14 flights to and from Changle International Airport in the provincial capital, Fuzhou, the official Xinhua news agency said.
■ Hong Kong
Chief charged with theft
The former head of a Chinese township has been arrested and will face trial on charges of gambling away millions of dollars of public money, newspapers reported yesterday. Authorities said Li Weimin used his position as chief of Tangxia Township in the southern province of Guangdong to embezzle more than 88.3 million yuan (US$11.04 million) and HK$2.9 million (US$372,900) from community coffers, the South China Morning Post and Wei Wen Po newspapers reported. Li, 43, also allegedly took bribes of 1.71 million yuan over a 10-year period, the reports said.
■ Kazakhstan
Chicken lays Allah egg
A chicken in a Kazakh village has laid an egg with the word Allah inscribed on its shell, state media reported yesterday. "Our mosque confirmed that it says `Allah' in Arabic," Bites Amantayeva, a farmer from the village of Stepnoi in eastern Kazakhstan, told state news agency Kazinform. "We'll keep this egg and we don't think it'll go bad." The news agency said the egg was laid just after a powerful hail storm hit the village. Kazakhstan is a large, thinly populated Central Asian state where Sunni Islam is a dominant religion.
■ Indonesia
Buffaloes spark rampage
Fighting buffaloes providing entertainment at a funeral charged at mourners, sparking a rampage that killed two people and injured 10 others, a media report said yesterday. The buffaloes broke away after battling in the Sulawesi village of Tana Toraja on Wednesday afternoon, sending thousands of spectators fleeing for safety, the Jakarta Post reported. Some pushed aside a minivan blocking their exit, crushing two people who later died of their injuries at a nearby hospital, Firdaus, a police official who goes by only one name, was quoted as saying. Ten others were hurt. Buffalo fights have been a traditional component of funerals in parts of Indonesia for generations.
■ Singapore
Scandal rocks confidence
A scandal at the nation's largest charity last year has shaken public confidence in charities and made donors more wary of how they give money, a newspaper reported yesterday. Citing surveys, the Straits Times newspaper said the proportion of people who donated money for causes last year fell to 89 percent from 97 percent in 2004. Total donations dropped from S$438 million (US$276 million) in 2004 to S$341 million in the past 12 months. Of 1,803 survey respondents, some 55 percent said they had a lot of confidence in charities before the controversy at the National Kidney Foundation, while only 28 percent did afterward.
■ Japan
Defense head to visit Kuwait
The country's defense chief said yesterday he will be visiting Japanese troops deployed in Kuwait this weekend, but did not mention if his trip was timed to collide with the withdrawal of Japanese soldiers from neighboring Iraq. Minister of State for Defense Fukushiro Nukaga told a news conference that he plans to arrive in Kuwait on Sunday to boost the morale of about 200 Japanese soldiers based in Kuwait. Nukaga's comments followed a report earlier yesterday by the Kyodo News agency, citing unnamed government officials, that said he will travel to Kuwait this weekend to greet Japanese troops as they pull out of Samawah.
■ Pakistan
Suicide bomber kills cleric
A suicide bomber killed a leading Pakistani Muslim Shiite cleric, Allama Hassan Turabi, in an attack yesterday in Karachi, provincial government officials said. "Allama Turabi is dead," Salahuddin Haider, a spokesman for the Sindh government, said from the hospital ward where the mortally wounded cleric had been rushed. A young nephew of the cleric and a bodyguard also died, along with the bomber, in the attack outside Turabi's house in a residential area of the city. Turabi had survived an assassination attempt in Karachi in April, when his car was hit by a remote-controlled bomb.
■ United Kingdom
`Wear nice pants': police
Women going on boozy nights out have been warned by police to "wear nice pants" in case they fall down drunk in the street. A Suffolk police safety campaign magazine Safe! shows pictures of young women slumped on the ground next to messages urging them: "If you've got it, don't flaunt it." "If you fall over or pass out, remember your skirt or dress may ride up," the magazine says. "You could show off more than you intended -- for all our sakes, please make sure you're wearing nice pants and that you've recently had a wax."
■ Germany
Cabbie reports thieves
Two Albanian men carrying stolen computers and flat-screen televisions worth US$13,000 flagged down a Berlin taxi to transport their loot home but were later arrested after the cab driver called the police. The taxi driver first helped the thieves load bulky boxes of stolen goods in front of a law office in the government quarter at 1am and then drove them to their apartment in a north Berlin district, a police spokeswoman said on Thursday. After collecting his fare and a generous tip, the taxi driver notified the police, who later raided the apartment and found other stolen items from previous burglaries.
■ Poland
Waste warning issued
EU newcomer Poland is being "flooded" by some 500,000 tonnes of waste illegally dumped in the country from older, wealthier EU states each year, Poland's chief waste management official said on Thursday. "Poland is being flooded by other people's waste," President of Poland's Chamber for Waste Management Dariusz Matlak said, quoted by the Polish PAP news agency. Matlak said Germany was the most serious offender, followed by Austria, Italy and the Netherlands.
■ Switzerland
Huge Alpine rock falls off
A massive chunk of Alpine mountain fell from one of the country's most famous peaks on Thursday -- an event largely expected after days of warnings from scientists regarding rock loosened by melting glacial ice. In a thundering collapse that lasted more than 15 minutes some 600,000 cubic meters of stone from the Eiger mountain fell in the evening, Grindelwald's rescue chief Kurt Amacher told the SF DRS TV station. The rock broke off in sections from the east face of the mountain, thundering down hundreds of meters onto the lower Grindelwald glacier and into the valley below. It sent up a cloud of dust that spread out over the valley, covering Grindelwald, a well-known resort near the Eiger, for hours. No one was injured and no buildings were hit, Amacher said.
■ United Kingdom
Fund to fight corruption
The government will create a US$184 million fund to fight corruption and improve political accountability in the developing world, the UK international development secretary Hilary Benn announced on Thursday. Other measures published yesterday in Benn's white paper include help for developing countries in tackling climate change and major spending increases on education, health, water and sanitation and social security. The document, setting out how the challenges addressed at last year's G8 summit at Gleneagles can be met, comes three days before the member countries reconvene in St Petersburg.
■ Nicaragua
Missiles to be destroyed
The National Assembly approved the destruction on Thursday of 651 surface-to-air missiles that Washington wants deactivated so they do not fall into terrorist hands. After a stormy session in which insults were exchanged, legislators voted to destroy the batch of shoulder-fired SAM-7 missiles acquired from the former Soviet Union during the 1980s. Representatives of the main opposition, the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front, walked out in an attempt to prevent a quorum. After the vote on Thursday the Sandinistas said the 46 deputies who voted for the missiles' destruction, exactly half the assembly, were not enough for a valid vote.
■ United States
Dog runs over woman
A police dog that was left in a pickup truck with the engine running apparently knocked the vehicle into gear and ran down a woman in Ogden, Utah, who was walking to her mailbox. Mary Stone, 41, was expected to remain hospitalized with a fractured pelvis and tailbone until at least yesterday, said her husband, Paul Stone. The dog, a German shepherd named Ranger, had been left in the truck while its handler responded to a domestic disturbance call on Tuesday, police Lieutenant Loring Draper said. The truck's engine was on so Ranger would have air conditioning.
■ United States
Mr T swears off bling
Mr T says he's finished with the gold chains. The former television action star shed the piles of gold chains that were his signature look after witnessing the destruction from Hurricane Katrina. "As a spiritual man, I felt it would be a sin against my God for me to wear all that gold again because I spent a lot of time with the less fortunate," the actor said on Thursday at the Television Critics Association's summer meeting. Mr T (real name Lawrence Tero) stars in I Pity the Fool debuting in October on TV Land. He dispenses advice to viewers who are struggling with life's problems. The former star of The A-Team said he's about more than his image of beating people up. "Yes, I am qualified to beat people up. But I am pretty intelligent," he said. "That's what throws people off."
■ Venezuela
Hunger strike continues
A hunger strike by inmates entered its fourth day on Thursday with prisoners' relatives gathering outside several penitentiaries to show solidarity with their loved ones. The hunger strike, which began on Monday as a means of pressuring authorities to take measures to reduce sentences and guarantee quicker trials, has spread to 16 of the country's 30 prisons, said Mayerling Rojas, director general of human rights at the Justice Ministry. Prisoners want lawmakers to reform the penal code, which requires inmates to complete half of their sentence before they can use work and study to reduce their incarceration time.
■ Mexico
Tijuana companies probed
Prosecutors announced they are investigating 14 Tijuana companies, from Tequila sellers to real estate agents, that the US Treasury Department alleges are linked to drug trafficking. In a news release on Thursday, the Federal Attorney General's Office said the companies may be laundering money and providing funds for the Arellano Felix Cartel, which is believed to smuggle tonnes of cocaine and methamphetamine into the US.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of