■ CHAIN
No sexual favors for firemen
Firemen have been banned from receiving sexual favors, bribes and other kickbacks as part of a new anti-corruption drive, the police ministry has announced. Receiving sexual favors is listed as one of the "non-material gains" that have been banned for anyone in the fire services department, the ministry notice said. Officials are also prevented from accepting cash, valuables and stocks and shares, while they and their relatives are banned from running fire service businesses and being contractors of related construction projects.
■ AUSTRALIA
Father sentenced to life
A man convicted of drowning his three sons during a Father's Day outing to spite his ex-wife was sentenced to life without parole yesterday. Robert Farquharson, 37, killed his sons Jai, 10, Tyler, 7, and Bailey, 2, by driving his car into a dam near his home in Winchelsea,Victoria, on Sept. 4, 2005. Farquharson, 38, pleaded not guilty but was convicted last month after a jury rejected his defense that he had blacked out from a coughing fit while driving. Cummins said Farquharson told a friend months before the deaths that he resented his ex-wife's new life and had suggested his sons would die in an accident at a dam.
■ JAPAN
Bullying cases rise
The number of bullying cases reported in schools has risen sharply after the term's definition was broadened following a series of bullying-linked student suicides, the Education Ministry said on Thursday. A total of 124,898 cases of bullying were reported at elementary, junior high and high schools in the fiscal year ending in March, up from 20,143 cases a year earlier. An official attributed the sharp rise to the wider definition of bullying and to the inclusion of private and national government-run schools in the total. It found that five junior high schoolers and one high schooler killed themselves because of bullying in the past fiscal year, up from one a year earlier.
■ CHINA
Lottery addicts receive help
A help center for lottery addicts that offers counseling and legal assistance has opened, the Beijing Morning Post said yesterday. The service will be run by the lottery research center at Peking University. "Most people who buy lottery tickets in China are not mentally mature, and they still hold the belief that they can be rich overnight," the center's director said.
Agencies";
■ GERMANY
Minister cancels China trip
The finance minister has canceled a planned trip to Beijing as his Chinese counterpart would not have been available to meet him, the ministry said on Thursday. Peer Steinbruck's planned visit of several days next month was called off because of the "very busy schedule of the new Chinese finance minister," Xie Xuren (謝旭人), the ministry said. Der Spiegel magazine said the cancelation was a sign of the strained relations between the two countries since Chancellor Angela Merkel received the Dalai Lama last month.
■ SWEDEN
Man guilty of sex crimes
A 32-year-old British man was found guilty on Thursday of infecting two young women with HIV, putting 13 more at risk of infection, and having sex with minors. Christer Merrill Aggett. Solna District Court ordered him to undergo a psychiatric examination before sentencing. He was charged last month for having sex with girls and women without telling them he was HIV-positive. Two of the women were infected. Six of the women who were not infected were under the age of 15 when the sexual encounters took place.
■ SOUTH AFRICA
Minister open to post
Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said she would not refuse a nomination to head the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and the country. Asked if she would be available for the post, she told Kaya FM radio late on Thursday: "ANC cadres never refuse when they are deployed. An ANC cadre has a responsibility to respond to what the ANC thinks they should do." The ANC will choose a new leader at a party congress next month. President Thabo Mbeki and his rival Jacob Zuma, Dlamini-Zuma's ex-husband, are seen as the leading contenders. As the ANC dominates the country's political scene, whoever wins the race is likely to become president in 2009.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Theft was `marvelous'
Former DJ Jimmy Savile described as "marvelous" the experience of having his glasses stolen on Thursday in a hotel. The 81-year-old, famous for presenting the once-seminal music program Top of the Pops, was in Leeds for an awards ceremony when a woman in her 20s grabbed his glasses late at night. "This girl was overcome and jumped on me from the side and wrestled my John Lennon-style glasses off my head," Savile said. "I thought it was marvelous because I haven't been jumped on by a girl for nearly 50 years ... If I ever find her, I'll buy her a box of chocolates."
■ IRAN
Book got past censors
The country's censors are not known for their tolerance of sexually risque literature, so Memories of My Melancholy Whores was never likely to win their approval. But to get Gabriel Garcia Marquez's highly acclaimed work into bookshops, publishers sanitized its title. As a result, the culture and Islamic guidance ministry waved through the innocuously named Memories of My Melancholy Sweethearts. The ministry reversed its decision after conservative media drew attention to the book, about a 90-year-old man in love with a child prostitute. Publication rights for the 2004 novel were withdrawn after all 5,000 copies of its first edition sold out within three weeks of arriving in the shops.
AGENCIES";
■ UNITED STATES
US to Bolivia: `Knock it off'
The US on Thursday told Bolivia to "knock it off" and stop leveling "unfounded" accusations against the US ambassador there. Bolivian officials have in recent months launched a string of accusations against US ambassador Philip Goldberg, including claims he was involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the government of leftist President Evo Morales. "The basic message is, just stop it. Knock it off," said a State Department spokesman. The spat stems from a photograph in which Goldberg and a businessman from Santa Cruz appear with a third person, Jhon Jairo Vanegas, who the Morales government says is a Colombian criminal. "I cannot understand this photograph with a Colombian paramilitary and this is an open conspiracy," Morales said in a speech last week.
■ UNITED STATES
Drunk boy drives truck
A Michigan police officer checking on a truck that got stuck in the mud was startled to find a 13-year-old boy behind the wheel. The boy's father, who was sitting in the passenger seat, told police he had had too much to drink and let his son drive. The boy had been drinking, too. "[The boy] even said he didn't want to drive because he was too drunk," Clio Police Chief James McLellan said. Open containers of beer and liquor were found in the vehicle. The father, 41, is facing several misdemeanor counts, including child endangerment, allowing an intoxicated person to drive his vehicle and allowing an unlicensed minor to drive.
■ BRAZIL
UN criticizes police killings
Increasingly violent police operations aimed at combating urban crime in Rio de Janeiro are causing growing bloodshed and masking a wave of summary killings, a UN representative warned. Most of the UN special rapporteur's criticism of the situation was aimed at Rio's authorities, who have this year begun an aggressive campaign against drug gangs. Government figures show that since January, when the Rio state governor, Sergio Cabral, came to power, at least 1,072 people have been killed by the police -- a 20 percent rise from last year.
■ MEXICO
Gunmen snatch corpse
Twenty heavily armed drug hitmen snatched the body of a fellow trafficker from a morgue in northern Mexico after he died in a dramatic helicopter crash, police said on Thursday. The gunmen killed two policemen as they took the corpse from the morgue in Ensenada. The dead man was thought to be a member of the Arellano Felix drug cartel. His fellow traffickers were believed to have wanted his body to take it away for burial without having to identify themselves when claiming the corpse. He died earlier this week in a helicopter crash.
■ CANADA
Schreiber to be extradited
An arms dealer who implicated a former Canadian prime minister in an alleged kickbacks scam on Thursday lost his latest bid to avoid extradition to Germany to face fraud, bribery and tax evasion charges. The 73-year-old Karlheinz Schreiber's removal will be delayed until Dec. 1. He has fought a German extradition request ever since he was first arrested in Canada in 1999. He prompted a furor in Ottawa with revelations of an alleged relationship with former prime minister Brian Mulroney dating back more than two decades. Schreiber said Mulroney accepted cash payments of US$300,000 from his Zurich bank account at three hotel meetings in New York and Montreal.
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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
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