■ AUSTRALIA
Sailor's sentence suspended
A US sailor convicted of soliciting a child for sex over the Internet was released yesterday and ordered to be deported. David Wayne Budd, 29, received an 18-month suspended sentence and was placed on a three-year good behavior bond. Budd pleaded guilty last month to using the Internet to groom a child for sex after holding an online conversation with a police detective posing as a 14-year-old girl. He had faced up to 12 years in prison, but the judge said he had suffered enough punishment, including the loss of his job, his wife and pension and health benefits amounting to some US$1 million.
■ AUSTRALIA
Rainfall could drop by 30%
Parts of the country could be 5oC hotter and rainfall could drop by 30 percent by 2070 if global greenhouse gas emissions are not radically reduced, government data said yesterday. Penny Whetton, a climate scientist with the government's main research body, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, said the country is already locked into a 1oC increase in average temperatures by 2030 due to past emissions. Under the most extreme scenario, the northern city of Darwin could face as many as 230 days above 35oC each year, compared with just 11 now.
■ JAPAN
Teacher caught with student
A 42-year-old schoolteacher has admitted and been arrested for having sex with her 16-year-old former student, police said on Monday, in what a television network called a "forbidden romance" that made her leave her family. Noriko Shimomura, a mother of three and music teacher at a publicly funded junior high school in southern Saga City, was arrested last week with a boy the age of her eldest child. She disappeared from school on Sept. 20 and her husband filed a missing-person report. She and the boy were caught at a police checkpoint on Thursday.
■ JAPAN
Emission goals to be revised
The government will revise its targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions after missing targets to cut 6 percent of emissions overall by 2012, the chief Cabinet spokesman said yesterday. Nobutaka Machimura said the government will set a new target by the end of the fiscal year. Under the global Kyoto Protocol agreement in 1997, Japan promised to reduce its emissions to 6 percent below 1990 emission levels by 2012. Instead, emissions rose 7.8 percent in 2005, which means the country needs to achieve a reduction of about 14 percent just to meet the 2012 goal.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Elton John exhibit closes
A British gallery that turned over a photograph belonging to Elton John to police amid concerns that it amounted to child pornography has now closed an exhibition featuring the star's photographic collection, it said on Monday. The BALTIC Center for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, England, said it closed "Thanksgiving," an installation of 149 pictures by US photographer Nan Goldin, at John's request. "After the removal of one image from the series it was no longer possible for BALTIC to exhibit the collection of works as the artist intended," the gallery said in a statement. "Therefore BALTIC is sympathetic to Sir Elton John's request and supportive of the decision."
■ NETHERLANDS
Cannabis cafes to close
Rotterdam is to close 18 coffee shops that sell cannabis near schools to protect local youths, the city authorities said on Monday. "The sale of soft drugs will have to end by June 1, 2009, in a total of 18 coffee shops within 200 to 250 meters of schools," the city council said in a statement. The port city currently has a total of 62 such coffee shops. The statement said there had been a worrying rise in the use of soft drugs by groups of vulnerable young people.
■ ISRAEL
Pilgrims baptized in Jordan
Hundreds of white-robed Christian pilgrims from Brazil entered the gently flowing waters of the Jordan River on Monday, some so overcome with emotion that they sobbed and collapsed on the shoulders of friends even before it was their turn to be immersed. The Brazilians, more than 700 in all, culminated a two-week pilgrimage to the Holy Land with a mass baptism at Yardenit, the site where the Jordan River flows into the Sea of Galilee and where many Christians believe that John the Baptist baptized Jesus.
■ ITALY
Florence divided over tram
Florence, the city that houses a large part of the country's -- and Europe's -- cultural heritage, is bitterly divided over plans for new tram lines that would slice through its famous Piazza del Duomo, the cathedral square. The first rails are to be laid next week as part of a 700 million euro (US$993 million) scheme that would give Florence three lines, running for a total of about 19km. The second line would run from the airport through the cathedral square, the Piazza del Duomo. Paolo Bonaiuti, a Florentine and Silvio Berlusconi's spokesman, who is to run for mayor, said it was "madness to think of putting up poles and overhead cables in one of the world's most beautiful squares."
■ UNITED KINGDOM
NHS rated `mediocre'
The state-funded National Health Service (NHS) remains a "mediocre" provider of healthcare, performing much less well than almost all of the country's peers in western Europe, according to a European survey. The index of European health services, issued on Monday in Brussels by Health Consumer Powerhouse, found the country had slid further down the European league table over the past year despite the investment in the NHS u nder New Labour. Of 29 countries assessed, the EU's 27 plus Norway and Switzerland, Britain came 17th. The same survey last year put Britain 15th.
■ UNITED STATES
Lollipops not enough
A man who pulled up to the drive-up window of a bank in Stone Lake, Wisconsin, on Monday on an all-terrain vehicle and demanded money but was not happy with the teller's response -- how about a lollipop? Even though the suspect had held up a bag that he said contained a bomb, the Stone Lake Bank teller said the money had already been removed from her till and all she had were lollipops, a local law enforcement officers said. He said the suspect, who wore camouflage clothing and a black helmet and face mask, fled in frustration and had not been caught.
■ UNITED STATES
Sea lion attacker enters plea
A California fisherman accused of stabbing a sea lion pleaded not guilty on Monday to violating the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act. Hai Nguyen, 24, of Garden Grove, faces a misdemeanor count of illegally taking and attempting to kill a marine mammal. He faces up to one year in prison and a US$20,000 fine if convicted. Police said Nguyen was fishing off a Newport Beach pier on July 27 when the sea lion, a 1.8m female, apparently snatched the bait from his fishing line. Authorities said Nguyen stabbed the sea lion with a steak knife. The animal was taken to the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach, where staff found the knife had pierced its heart and it was later euthanized. Nguyen's attorney said the sea lion was already stabbed. "It was bleeding before it came toward my client," attorney Robert Viefhaus said.
■ UNITED STATES
Alabama sex toy ban upheld
The US Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear a challenge to Alabama's ban on the sale of sex toys, ending a nine-year legal battle. An adult-store owner in Montgomery had asked the justices to throw out the law as an unconstitutional intrusion into the privacy of the bedroom. Sherri Williams said she plans to sue again, this time on free speech grounds. "My motto has been they are going to have to pry this vibrator from my cold, dead hand," she said. Residents may legally buy sex toys out of state for use in Alabama, or they may buy sexual devices in Alabama that have a "bona fide medical" purpose.
■ UNITED STATES
Man wants leg back
A South Carolina man who stored his severed leg in a barbecue smoker that was later auctioned off is locked in a custody dispute with a North Carolina man who found it. John Wood's leg was amputated near the knee after a 2004 airplane crash. The limb, which Wood had kept in the smoker in a storage facility after he lost his home, was bought by Shannon Whisnant last Tuesday in an auction held by the storage company because Wood had missed his monthly payments. Whisnant gave it to police, who turned it over to a funeral home. But Whisnant, who put a sign on the empty smoker charging US$1 to US$3 for a look, now wants it back. Wood said he was not interested in Whisnant's offer to share custody and profits.
■ UNITED STATES
Love birds urged to give up
Lapeer County Sheriff Ron Kalanquin wants to help two Michigan bank robbery suspects tie the knot. "I'll volunteer to marry them in the jail if they surrender," he said on Monday. A 24-year-old man and a 23-year-old woman are suspected of taking about US$5,000 in a bank robbery on Sept. 19. Detectives determined that the money was used to buy wedding rings, pay back rent and pay the woman's attorney for work done in a child custody case, the Flint Journal reported.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not