■ MARSNALL ISLANDS
Stranded tourists evacuated
Foreign tourists will be evacuated from one of the world's most famous nuclear test sites after they were left stranded by the grounding of the Marshall Islands national airline, officials said. Seven international divers from Australia and the US and a Canadian photo journalist were stranded on Bikini after Air Marshall Islands' last operational plane was grounded last Saturday after a mid-air engine failure. The Marshalls Sea Patrol said a patrol boat would depart today for the 36 hour journey to Bikini from the capital Majuro.
■ CHINA
Uranium goes missing
Eight kg of radioactive uranium has gone missing, delaying the verdict in a trial of four men charged with attempting to sell it on the black market, state media said yesterday. A court in Guangzhou heard the four tried to sell the material, which can be used in making nuclear weapons, between 2005 and January of this year, the China Daily said. The men were arrested in January after a potential buyer in Hong Kong reported them to the authorities, but "the men claimed [the uranium] had been lost because it had been moved around so much between potential buyers," the paper said. A verdict will not be reached until the uranium is tracked down.
■ JAPAN
Inmates die from heat
Two inmates in cells without air conditioning or fans have died in a heat wave, which has claimed dozens of lives this month, jail officers said yesterday. A 71-year-old man was found unconscious in his 4m2 cell without air conditioning or a fan at a jail in Saitama Prefecture, where the mercury hit an all-time record 40.9oC last week. The man was sent to hospital, but died two days later, said a jail officer. In Osaka Prefecture, another inmate in his 30s, who was undergoing rehabilitation for drug addiction, suffered a fever and was taken to hospital. A few days later he returned to his cell, but died the next morning, the officer said.
■ JAPAN
Man cuts off finger in protest
A member of a right-wing group was arrested on Thursday after he sent his severed little finger to the ruling party's headquarters in protest at Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's failure to visit a Tokyo war shrine. Abe stayed away from Yasukuni shrine on the Aug. 15 anniversary of the nation's World War II surrender. The 54-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of making threats after he sent his finger to the Liberal Democratic Party headquarters, said a police official. The envelope also contained a letter of protest and a disk showing images of the man cutting off his finger, the official said. "I thought they would ignore me if I just sent the letter, so I put my little finger in as well," Kyodo news agency quoted the man as telling police.
■ AUSTRIA
Man rescued from trash
Refuse collectors rescued a Polish man from the jaws of a rubbish truck after hearing his cries for help, daily Kleine Zeitung reported on Wednesday. The homeless 50-year-old had spent the night in a rubbish container on a housing estate in the town of Arnoldstein. In the morning, refuse collectors came along and emptied the bin into the back of their truck, Kleine Zeitung said. One of the workers heard his cries and stopped the machine when the press in the back of the truck started squashing the rubbish. The man was not hurt but taken to hospital for a check-up.
■ RUSSIA
Man's privates torched
A woman set fire to her ex-husband's penis as he sat naked watching television and drinking vodka, Moscow police said on Wednesday. Asked if the man would make a full recovery, a police spokeswoman said it was "difficult to predict." The attack climaxed three years of acrimonious enforced co-habitation. The couple divorced three years ago but continued to share a small apartment, something common in a country where property costs are very high. "It was monstrously painful," the wounded ex-husband told Tvoi Den newspaper. "I was burning like a torch. I don't know what I did to deserve this."
■ FRANCE
Love handles disappear
A small ring of flab around President Nicolas Sarkozy's middle mysteriously disappeared in US vacation photos of him in a swimsuit that were published in the weekly Paris-Match. Sarkozy's office insisted on Thursday they had nothing to do with the disappearance. Spokesman David Martinon denied reports that the presidential palace gave instructions to the magazine's owner -- and Sarkozy friend -- Arnaud Lagardere, to retouch the photos. "The only line we work on is the political and diplomatic one," Martinon told a news conference. "We are rather bad at Photoshop here," he added ironically. Paris-Match said it retouched the photos because "the position of the boat exaggerated this protuberance ... In lightening the shadows, the correction was exaggerated."
■ RUSSIA
Czar's son found?
The remains of the last czar's son and heir to the throne, missing since the royal family was gunned down nine decades ago by Bolsheviks in a basement room, may have been found, an archaeologist said on Thursday. Bones found in the remnants of a bonfire near Yekaterinburg, the city where Czar Nicholas II and his wife and children were held prisoner and then shot in 1918, belong to a boy and a young woman roughly the ages of the czar's son Alexei and a sister whose remains have also never been found, a top local archaeologist said.
■ FRANCE
Dead babies discovered
Police on Thursday arrested the mother of three newborns after their decomposing bodies were found in a suitcase and box at her home in Albertville. The 36-year-old woman told police she had given birth to the babies on her own and hidden them from her partner. The babies were born in 2001, 2003 and last year. Her companion stumbled on one of the decomposing bodies in a suitcase while the woman was away and alerted police. Prosecutor Henry-Michel Perret said "she said that she did not want to be pregnant."
■ UNITED STATES
Wiccans charged in feud
A self-proclaimed high priestess and a man were accused of tossing raccoon parts on the doorsteps of businesses, allegedly as part of a Wiccan community feud in Salem, Massachusetts. Sharon Graham, 46, and a fellow Wiccan, Frederick Purtz, 22, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to charges of littering and malicious destruction of property. Graham also was charged with intimidating a witness. They were accused of putting a raccoon head and entrails on the doorsteps of Angelica of the Angels and the Goddess' Treasure Chest in May. A witness said Graham had a disagreement with the owners of the targeted businesses over proposed regulations that would limit the number of psychics who come to Salem during the Halloween season.
■ VENEZUELA
Body sent to morgue by taxi
A Caracas family was forced to send a murdered son to the morgue in a taxi after waiting five hours for police who never arrived, El Universal reported on Wednesday. Heavy rains threatened to wash away Kelvin Jose Pinango's body, which was left near a creek in the poor 23 de Enero neighborhood after the 20-year-old was killed on Monday in what appeared to be an attempt to steal his motorcycle, the newspaper said. "We dragged the body to the edge [of the creek] and after five hours we hired a taxi," a family member told the paper, asking not to be identified.
■ UNITED STATES
Suspect flees police station
A man being questioned in a homicide escaped from police custody on Thursday afternoon by jumping from a third-floor window at a Queens County police station onto the roof of a lower building, the police said. The man, Maxie Dacosta, 27, had been detained as a suspect in the death of a Long Island man, Darnell Angevine, 25, of Amityville. Angevine was shot in the chest shortly before 3am in Jamaica, New York, during a dispute involving a large group of men, the police said. Dacosta was taken to the 103rd Precinct station house, where he escaped about 2:30pm, the police said. The police said the window had been closed.
■ UNITED STATES
Drill instructor charged
A US Marines drill instructor has been charged with 225 criminal counts connected to abusing recruits, a Marines spokesman said. Sergeant Jerrod Glass postponed making a plea during a court appearance at San Diego Marine Corps Recruit Depot in California, where he worked, the spokesman said on Thursday. The charges include 91 counts of assault, 90 of failure to obey lawful orders and 27 of cruelty and maltreatment. Glass had worked as a drill sergeant for less than a year when the alleged mistreatment occurred in January and February. No member of his platoon was seriously injured.
■ UNITED STATES
Terrorist-buster busted
A veteran detective's claims that he flunked a drug test because his wife served him marijuana-spiked meatballs "simply weren't credible," and he has been fired by the New York Police Department, a spokesman said. Chiofalo, a 22-year-veteran assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, was suspended without pay in 2005 after a random drug test found marijuana in his system. During the investigation, his wife said she had secretly substituted marijuana for oregano in her meatball recipe in hopes of forcing him to leave police work. His lawyers presented evidence that she had passed a lie-detector test.
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