■ MALAYSIA
Twins' sex still uncertain
Doctors have not determined the sex of conjoined twins born four days ago to a Malaysian couple, a report said yesterday. "The doctors have yet to identify our babies' gender. They have also yet to determine if the babies are sharing any internal organs," Norhisyam Mohamad, 30, the twins' father, was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times newspaper. The twins are joined at the abdomen and buttocks and each have a pair of legs. The premature twins and their mother Sopiah Daud, 30, are in stable condition. The couple have three other children.
■ THAILAND
Three shot dead in south
Suspected rebels have shot dead three local government employees in Yala Province, police said yesterday. A 59-year-old elementary-school teacher was shot as he waited for a bus, while a 52-year-old police officer and a 44-year-old security guard at a technical college were killed in separate drive-by shootings on Monday, local police said.
■ CHINA
Satellite discovers glaciers
A satellite has discovered 42 glaciers on the roof of the world, the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, where ice is shrinking because of global warming, and the group could be the biggest of them all, state media said yesterday. Beijing has become increasingly concerned about global warming as studies show glaciers retreating on the plateau, where China's largest rivers originate. The 49 glaciers were found by satellite imagery in Bomi County, which has an average altitude of 4,200m above sea level, the China Daily reported. The rivers of ice on the plateau are crucial for drinking water and irrigation at ground level.
■ AFGHANISTAN
Bus crash kills at least 32
At least 32 people were killed and 35 injured when two buses collided head-on, an official said yesterday. The incident happened on a highway in Ghazni Province just before dusk on Monday, the provincial police chief said. "Two passenger buses hit each other nose-to-nose ... in Gilan district of Ghazni Province around 6pm yesterday while traveling at high speed," Ali Shah Ahmadzai said. Five children and two women were among the victims, he said, adding the toll could rise as most of the injured were in critical condition and there was a lack of medical facilities and supplies at the scene.
■ CHINA
Tip-offs now taken online
Whistle-blowers who report crimes and corruption will be better protected as the country establishes a new Internet and phone reporting system, state media said yesterday. According to the Supreme People's Prosecution Office, 60 percent of the nearly 200,000 cases it handles each year originate from tip-offs by members of the public, the China Daily reported. But due to the lack of protection for whistle-blowers under Chinese law, many people who identify and expose incidents of crime and graft suffer retaliation from people they report on -- who are mostly corrupt officials.
■ MALAYSIA
Orangutan attacks tourist
An orangutan at a wildlife sanctuary fought with a French tourist for her backpack, leaving her bruised and scratched, an official said yesterday. Odile Nordon, 24, was taking photographs of Delima, a female orangutan roaming free in the Semenggoh Wildlife Center on Borneo island on Sunday, when the animal grabbed at the backpack, said Wilfred Landong, the chief park warden of Sarawak State. They fought briefly over the bag, with Delima ripping Nordon's pants. "She had scratches and bruise marks on her knees and thighs," Landong said. Nordon, who managed to keep her backpack, told the New Straits Times newspaper that she thought orangutans were "friendly, cuddly creatures. It's a painful lesson to find out the truth."
■ CHINA
Virus creator, partners jailed
Four men have been jailed for writing or profiting from a computer virus dubbed the "joss-stick burning panda" which infected over a million computers, media reported on yesterday. Li Jun, creator of the virus, made 145,000 yuan (US$19,300) in scams including selling anti-virus software to combat the virus and was jailed for four years, the Beijing Youth Daily said. "I didn't expect it to cause so much damage," Li was quoted as telling a Hubei court.
■ SPAIN
Blast damages police station
An explosive device damaged a police station and nearby houses in Basque country yesterday but nobody was injured, police said. The device went off against the perimeter wall of the Basque regional police station in Zarautz at around 1:30am, wrecking garages and rooms inside the compound and blowing in windows and doors of houses, police said in a statement. There was no warning of the attack, media reports said. The explosion followed the arrest of 13 suspects on Monday in an investigation by French police over a suspected attack last year by Basque separatist guerrillas ETA on a hotel run by renowned chef Alain Ducasse in France's Basque country.
■ RUSSIA
Artificial island to be built
Moscow will build a US$6 billion artificial island off the coast of the Black Sea resort of Sochi ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games there, a Russian property developer said on Monday. The 250-hectare island will bear the name of Federation Island and will be shaped in the form of a map of Russia. Developer M-Industry Group said the island would be linked to the mainland by three bridges. M-Industry said Dutch architect Erick van Egeraat would design the project. The design was shown to Russian President Vladimir Putin last week during an investment conference in Sochi.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Chatham awards prize
Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser al-Missned, the consort of the Emir of Qatar, has won the Chatham House Prize for improving international relations, the foreign policy think tank announced on Monday. The prestigious annual award is given to a leading international statesperson deemed to have made the most significant contribution to the improvement of international relations in the previous year. Sheikha Mozah chairs the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development. She was awarded the prize because of her commitment to progressive education and community welfare in Qatar and her strong advocacy of closer relations between Islamic countries and the West.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Speeding driver jailed
A driver has been jailed for 10 weeks for speeding at 277kph -- the fastest ever recorded in a routine police speed check in Britain. Timothy Brady, 33, pleaded guilty at Oxford Crown Court. He was disqualified from driving for three years, ordered to pay costs of ?474 (US$955) and ordered to retake an "extended" test. Brady, of Harrow, Middlesex, was caught in a 112kph zone in his 3.6 liter Porsche 911 Turbo in Oxfordshire in January.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Students learn to stay in line
Foreign students staying on the Isle of Wright are to be educated in the etiquette of lining up for buses, after locals complained about them not observing the conventions. Southern Vectis, which operates buses on the island said it would contact local language schools following complaints about the behavior of young students over the summer. "In their cultures, they do not queue for buses where they live and there is a scrum every time a bus turns up, while in British culture there is a nice orderly queue," operations manager March Morgan Huws said. "What we have said is that we will work with the language schools to provide some instructions on the etiquette of queuing."
■ CANADA
Judge punished for swearing
A senior judge has been formally reprimanded for swearing during a courtroom clash with a prosecutor earlier this year, officials said on Friday. British Columbia Supreme Court Judge Peter Leask's behavior was "improper and tarnished the reputation of the court and the judiciary," concluded an investigation by the Canadian Judicial Council. Leask resorted to expletives in March at the trial of a man charged with trafficking cocaine. The judge disagreed with the prosecutor's premise that the accused had hidden the drug in his own storage locker. "He'd have had to have been out of his fucking mind to store it in his own locker, all right?" the judge told the prosecutor. He also referred to "the whole fucking thing."
■ GUANTANAMO BAY
Cameraman in decline
A television cameraman who has been held at the US prison since 2001 is suffering medical problems due to a long hunger strike and must be released immediately, a leading journalist group said. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said in Brussels that Sami al-Haj, a cameraman for television station al-Jazeera, has been on hunger strike and his lawyers have described him as being in "a serious physical and mental decline." Al-Haj, who was born in Sudan, was picked up at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in December 2001 and the IFJ said he had been tortured and accused of terrorism offences although he has not been charged or brought to trial.
■ MEXICO
Cocaine-filled plane crashes
An airliner stuffed with dozens of sacks of Colombian cocaine crashed in a southern jungle on Monday, police said. Local police officer Eustaquio Arredondo told reporters no casualties had been found but one person who was apparently on board the aircraft had been arrested. TV images showed 132 military-style black bags containing around 3.3 tonnes of cocaine lined up in rows next to chunks of the wrecked plane, which came down near the municipality of Tixkokob, a three-hour drive west of the Cancun beach resort.
■ UNITED STATES
Engaged couple robbed
Luke Jacunski and his girlfriend were robbed at gunpoint just seconds after he proposed. Jacunski got on one knee and popped the question to his girlfriend of six months, Mami Nagase, in a romantic spot at a gazebo in New York City's Central Park on Saturday night. She had just agreed to marry him when a gunman jumped from the bushes and yelled, "Give me your money and get on the ground!" As Jacunski, 30, and Nagase, 24, got on the ground, he was able to slip the engagement ring off her finger and hide it in his pocket. The robber took a Rolex watch from Nagase and US$125 from Jacunski. The robber then ran away.
■ UNITED STATES
Director gets jail time
John McTiernan, the Hollywood director behind such blockbuster action films as Die Hard and Predator, was sentenced to four months in prison on Monday for lying to federal agents. McTiernan was one of seven defendants who pleaded guilty in connection with the conspiracy and racketeering case of disgraced celebrity detective Anthony Pellicano, who was charged with using illegal wiretaps and illicit database searches. McTiernan, 56, pleaded guilty last April to making knowingly false statements to FBI agents investigating Pellicano when he denied having asked Pellicano to wiretap producer Charles Roven.
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
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
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of