■ MALAYSIA
Lack of proof in murder case
A woman detained after her Singaporean husband's chopped up body was found in a refrigerator has been released because of lack of evidence just days after police said they had solved the case, reports said yesterday. The 33-year-old woman had been in remand for 11 days and was widely expected to be charged for the murder of Goh Yoke Seng yesterday. State prosecutors however later said they did not have enough evidence to hold her. Criminal investigation department Chief Ku Chin Wah said investigations against the woman would still continue, the Star reported.
■ MALAYSIA
Flag error gives boat away
Vietnamese fishermen flying a Malaysian flag as a decoy while sailing in Malaysian waters gave the game away by mistakenly flying it upside down. This is an unusual mistake, because "Stripes of Glory" as the flag is known at home, carries a blue rectangle in its top left corner emblazoned with a yellow crescent and star, while red-and-white stripes alternate on the rest. Local fishermen became suspicious, and tipped off fishing authorities, who detained 13 crewmen after seizing 500kg of stingrays, valued at 6,000 ringgit (US$1,737), along with a fake fishing license, the Star newspaper reported.
■ CHINA
Floods kill 19
Nineteen people were killed and 37 missing after violent rainstorms triggered floods in the northwest, state media reported yesterday. The rainstorms, which started to hit the southeastern part of Shaanxi Province on Monday, destroyed homes and ruined crops, causing 280 million yuan (US$37 million) in damages, a provincial flood control headquarters official told Xinhua news agency. The latest deaths continue a devastating run of weather, with the Ministry of Civil Affairs reporting that natural disasters had left 712 people dead and 163 missing last month. The death toll from natural disasters in the vast country in the first seven months of this year was 1,279, with another 239 missing.
■ INDIA
Migrant workers murdered
Suspected separatists in the northeast shot dead 11 people in the latest ethnic attack, police said yesterday. Separately, a child was killed and 18 people were injured in two explosions as rebel groups stepped up attacks to protest New Delhi's rule over the oil, tea and timber-rich state of Assam. Late yesterday, around a dozen heavily armed militants entered the homes of two families of Hindi-speaking migrant workers and shot them as they slept, police said. The attack took place in a village 250km east of Guwahati. In a shooting in the same district on Wednesday, eight Hindi-speaking migrants were killed, raising fears that a wave of attacks could be under way similar to events in January, when over 60 laborers were killed.
■ PAKISTAN
Storm kills 13 people
At least 13 people, including six children, died yesterday in the aftermath of storms that pounded Karachi for two days, officials said. Another two people were killed when they were struck by lightning in Badin District of Sindh Province, provincial Health Minister Syed Sardar Ahmed said. Severe weather has forced the provincial government to declare a state of emergency in Karachi's hospitals, with holidays canceled for all doctors and paramedics, officials said. Most of the city was under knee-deep water caused by the heavy rains, causing traffic chaos.
■ RUSSIA
Tunguska rock disappears
Russian police were combing the northern Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk on Friday for a 3 tonne meteorite that has disappeared from under the nose of its keepers. The giant rock was stolen from the yard of the Tunguska Space Event foundation, whose director said it was part of the meteor that caused a massive explosion in Siberia in 1908, news agency Interfax reported. "It winds up that it disappeared back in June, when the foundation was moving out of its old building," a police spokesman said. The "Tunguska event" was a mysterious mid-air explosion in Siberia in 1908 that was 1,000 times more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
■ SPAIN
`The Loner' caught
Spain's most wanted thief, "The Loner," saw himself as a Robin Hood-style figure and said he robbed banks only because they stole from the public, his lawyer said on Thursday. Accused of killing three policemen and holding up more than 30 banks, Jaime Jimenez Arbe was planning to move on to insurance companies when he was arrested last month, Spanish media reported, citing lawyer Jose Mariano Trillo-Figueroa. "I am not a killer and if I was obliged to shoot at officers of the law, it was always against my will and in order to avoid being arrested," Jimenez said in a letter reproduced on the Web sites of newspapers El Pais and El Mundo.
■ UKRAINE
Small croc on the run
A small crocodile called Godzik, or Little Godzilla, which escaped from its cage in southern Ukraine at the end of May, is still at large and apparently enjoying itself, an official said on Friday. The 70cm Nile crocodile, which swam away during a publicity show on a beach on the Sea of Azov, is defying attempts to recapture it. Dariel Adjiba, of the local office of the emergencies ministry, said the reptile has apparently made its home on an abandoned barge which ran aground in the shallow sea, where it can often be seen sunning itself.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Man attacks painting
A homeless man pleaded guilty on Friday to attacking a £1.7 million (US$3.4 million) painting with a hammer in London's National Portrait Gallery. Mark Paton, 44, was arrested on Wednesday after repeatedly hitting Joshua Reynolds' portrait of 18th-century diarist and lexicographer Samuel Johnson. He admitted criminal damage and possession of a hammer with intent to cause criminal damage during a hearing at City of Westminster Magistrates Court. Defense lawyer Euan MacMillan said Paton had given no explanation for the attack. "He has nothing against Sir Joshua Reynolds or Samuel Johnson," MacMillan said.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Half-tonne burial completed
A man who died of heart failure weighing 317kg has been buried in what undertakers said was the biggest coffin ever made in Britain. Mark Bamber, 38, was buried in a solid mahogany casket measuring 2.3m long and 1.4m wide with a depth of 0.76m, the Manchester Evening News in northwest England said. The coffin is said to have weighed half a tonne. He could not be cremated as the crematorium oven in his home town of Wigan was too small.
■ UNITED STATES
Woman strangles raccoon
A Connecticut woman killed a raccoon with her bare hands on Thursday after the rabid animal attacked a young boy. The woman was walking in the woods with a group of children when the animal bit the five-year-old son of a friend, animal control officials said. She pulled the raccoon off the child, told the children to run home and strangled the animal, they said. "She had the presence of mind to choke it," animal control officer April Leiler told the Meriden Record-Journal newspaper. "She is one tough lady." The carcass was taken to a state laboratory where it tested positive for rabies. The woman and the boy are undergoing rabies treatment.
■ UNITED STATES
Singing drives woman nuts
A woman attacked a karaoke singer belting out Coldplay on Thursday night in Seattle, telling him he "sucked" before she pushed and punched him to get him to stop singing, bar staff said. The man was singing Yellow when it happened. When she was escorted outside, the 21-year-old woman "went crazy," bartender Robert Willmette said, throwing punches at him and others, including an off-duty police officer. Patrol officers and detectives then arrived at the neighborhood bar. Before police could handcuff the woman, she headbutted the off-duty officer at least twice. The woman was booked in jail for investigation of assault.
■ ISRAEL
Lecturer in hot water
Defense Minister Ehud Barak has demanded the suspension of a university lecturer for publicly cursing an Israeli officer during the evacuation of settlers illegally occupying two houses in the West Bank town of Hebron. Bar-Ilan university literature lecturer Hilel Weiss went to support the settlers as the army forced them out on Tuesday. As he was being dragged away by police, Weiss shouted at Colonel Yehudah Foux: "I wish your wife becomes a widow, that your mother goes into mourning and that your children become orphans." Barak wrote to professor Moshe Kave, rector of Bar-Ilan university near Tel Aviv, to demand Weiss' suspension until he publicly withdraws his comments.
■ UNITED STATES
Pants suit loser countersues
A man who lost a US$54 million lawsuit against his former dry cleaner is fighting their attempts to collect attorney fees from him. Roy Pearson filed an opposition to the defendants' motion for attorneys' fees on Friday, saying he should not have to pay the US$82,907.50 that the Chung family owes to defend themselves against his 2005 lawsuit. Pearson had claimed that the "Satisfaction Guaranteed" sign that once hung in the Chungs' shop was misleading and violated Washington's consumer protection act. A pair of his pants went missing, but a week later, the store owners said they were found. Pearson denied that they were his and sued.
■ UNITED STATES
Airport drops manhunt
Authorities have stopped searching for a man who bypassed security screening on Friday at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, and officials said he may have simply walked out of the airport. The man slipped past screeners shortly before 8am, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) spokesman Jon Allen said. Officials searched about 15 planes on the ground and shut down a concourse without finding him, Allen said. "We will look into how this incident occurred and what we can do to ensure that it does not happen again," said Chris White, another TSA spokesman.
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
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
‘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