■ JAPAN
Body found in garbage
A man had a shock on Thursday when he went to a garbage collection point and found the dead body of an 85-year-old woman wrapped in a bedsheet and blanket, police said. The dead woman was barefoot in blue jeans with undergarments for her top, said a police spokesman in Yokohama, just south of Tokyo. “A 61-year-old man in the neighborhood found the wrapped body in a heap of garbage at about eight in the morning,” the spokesman said. The woman was identified as Take Ishida, who lived in a nearby apartment complex with her 54-year-old daughter Keiko Ishida.
■ NEW ZEALAND
Snake gets health break
A sick yellow-bellied sea snake that washed up in the usually snake-free country will be allowed to recuperate over the winter before being released back into the sea, news reports said yesterday. The snake, which lives in warmer waters of the Pacific, was found on a beach near Dargaville on Wednesday. Dehydrated and cold, it was being treated at an aquarium in Auckland, where it will be allowed to recover, the New Zealand Herald reported.
■ THAILAND
Soldiers remember
Hundreds of Australians and New Zealanders yesterday mourned World War II prisoners of war who died by the thousands as they hacked through the jungles to build a railway for their Japanese army captors. Six former Australian veterans of the war joined the group of some 400 at a dawn ceremony at Hellfire Pass, a stretch of the so-called “Death Railway” where conditions were particularly brutal. The ceremony was held to mark Anzac Day, named for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.
■ INDIA
Mother dies outside hospital
An “untouchable” woman who gave birth outside a hospital because doctors would not treat her died on Thursday, a day after her baby, officials admitted. The newborn boy of Maya Devi, 28, died on Wednesday because of lack of medical help minutes after being born outside the maternity wing of Kanpur Medical College in Uttar Pradesh State. Devi was only put in intensive care after giving birth but she died of a heart attack early on Thursday morning. Several doctors, including the hospital’s chief medical superintendent, had refused to touch her or provide medical care as she delivered her baby, the Press Trust of India reported.
■ THAILAND
Drug smuggler dies
A suspected Australian drug smuggler died after some of the 60 hashish-packed condoms he swallowed burst, police said yesterday. John Paul Jones, 51, died in the south on Saturday after an X-ray found he had 60 hashish-packed condoms weighing a total of 794g in his stomach, Lieutenant Colonel Weerasak Pokarat said. The scattered drugs badly affected his colon and liver, he said. Weerasak said the Australian embassy had been informed of his death, but nobody had yet come forward to claim Jones’ body.
■ SINGAPORE
TV station fined over show
A TV station was slapped with a 15,000 Singapore dollar (US$10,500) fine for airing a show depicting a homosexual couple and their adopted baby in a manner promoting “a gay lifestyle,” the media regulator said. MediaCorp TV showed an episode of a home and decor series called Find and Design featuring the host helping the couple decorate a nursery on Jan. 13, the Media Development Authority (MDA) said on Thursday. MDA objected to scenes of the couple and the baby as well as the host’s acknowledgement of them as a family. It said the broadcaster breached the Free-to-Air TV Program Code “which disallows programs that promote, justify or glamorize gay lifestyles.”
■ SOUTH KOREA
Arson sentenced to jail
A court sentenced a man to 10 years in prison yesterday for setting a fire that destroyed a 14th-century gate considered one of the country’s most treasured landmarks. The Seoul Central District Court convicted Chae Jong-ki, 69, of violating the Cultural Properties Protection Law by burning down the Namdaemun gate in central Seoul in February. Chae had admitted to setting fire to the gate in anger over a land dispute unrelated to the landmark. “It’s unavoidable to sentence him to a heavy penalty as he caused unimaginable mental suffering to the people and tarnished the national image,” court spokesman Ma Yong-joo quoted Judge Lee Kyung-chun as saying.
■ CHINA
Nine die of gas poisoning
Nine young women in Beijing have died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a gas water heater, media said yesterday, in the country’s worst such accident in recent memory. Police found the girls unconscious on Thursday morning in an apartment in Chaoyang district in Beijing, the Beijing Morning Post said. They were taken to hospital where doctors tried to save them but to no avail. Another woman survived the accident. “The preliminary judgment is that the use of an indoor water heater for shower for a relatively long period of time has caused the deaths,” the newspaper quoted police as saying.
■ SOUTH AFRICA
Tourism security boosted
Authorities are boosting security at Table Mountain to fight crime that has caused a drop in tourist numbers, a Cape Town city official said on Thursday. Councillor Simon Grindrod said the mountain’s Signal Hill area — popular with lovers seeking a secluded spot or tourists wanting unparalleled views across Table Bay — will have 24-hour security in place from May 13. The new measures include foot patrols, closed-circuit TV, panic buttons, motion detectors and increased lighting. “South Africa is at the cusp of its biggest tourism draw card in its history, the 2010 Soccer World Cup,” Grindrod said in a statement.
■ ITALY
Saint attracts pilgrims
The exhumed body of Padre Pio, a saint considered a miracle worker by his devotees, attracted thousands of pilgrims on Thursday when it went on display 40 years after his death. Padre Pio is one of the Catholic Church’s most popular saints and during his lifetime the Italian monk was said to have had the stigmata, the bleeding wounds of Jesus’ crucifixion on his hands and feet. The economy of this southern town revolves around the cult of Padre Pio and heaving crowds waited to see his body, displayed in a crystal, marble and silver sepulcher in the crypt of the monastery where he spent most of his life. His face was reconstructed with a lifelike silicone mask of the type used in wax museums because it was apparently too decomposed to show when the body was exhumed.
■ SUDAN
UN driver killed
A UN World Food Programme (WFP) driver was killed in Darfur, the second fatal attack in two months on vital aid deliveries feeding millions in Sudan’s violent west, a statement said on Thursday. Banditry on Darfur’s roads has spiked with WFP reporting 26 drivers still missing from 60 truck hijackings this year. The attacks have cut humanitarian deliveries by half and forced a sharp cut in rations for aid-dependent Darfuris from next month. “Mohammed Makki was on his first-ever delivery trip to Darfur, working for a WFP contract trucking firm delivering food assistance,” the WFP statement said. “He was the father of six children.” Makki was repairing his truck, which had broken down near South Darfur’s capital Nyala, when he was attacked three days ago, WFP said.
■ SWEDEN
Sex trade under review
Stockholm appointed a special investigator on Thursday to evaluate the effects of a law that targets the buyers of sex instead of the prostitutes. Justice Minister Beatrice Ask said the evaluation, to be completed by 2010, is warranted partly because of the growing international interest in the law, which was introduced in 1999. “There are many good reasons to prevent prostitution and the harm it can lead to for individuals as well as for society,” Ask said in a statement. “An investigation to thoroughly analyze these issues is both important and long-awaited.” Many countries considering a similar law are eager to find out whether it has reduced the sex trade in Sweden, or merely driven it underground. Buying sex is punished by fines or up to six months in prison under the so-called “Sex Purchase Law.” But selling sex is not a crime because prostitutes are viewed as victims. In January, a high-level British delegation came to study the Swedish approach as Britain reviews its own prostitution laws, which prohibit soliciting and loitering for sex, but not buying sex.
■ UNITED STATES
Prosecutors focus on border
The US is hiring more federal prosecutors to help crack down on gun-running and the smuggling of drugs and illegal immigrants over the porous US-Mexico border, officials said on Thursday. Deputy Attorney-General Mark Filip said the Justice Department would provide funding for an additional 64 assistant attorneys to target crime along the nearly 3,200km border. The prosecutors, together with 35 additional contract support staff, are to be allocated from Southern California to south Texas and will work to curb smuggling over the border.
■ HAITI
Mudslide kills three people
Three children were killed and two people injured when a mudslide triggered by torrential rains knocked down a wall and crushed a house in Port-au-Prince, witnesses said on Thursday. “It was raining a lot and a lot of water was coming down from the hill and then the wall collapsed and fell down on the house,” said Jean Demeza, who lives in the city’s Canape-Vert area. “The three children killed were three months old, six years old and 14 years old and the two adults, who were wounded, were taken to the hospital,” Demeza said.
■ UNITED STATES
Carjacker asks directions
A carjacking suspect stopped during the crime to ask a television news crew for directions, police in Cleveland, Ohio, said. The 19-year-old was arraigned on Thursday on a charge of aggravated robbery and ordered held on US$50,000 bond. WOIO-TV newswoman Shannon O’Brien and photographer Eric Walls were doing a sidewalk report on Monday on bank problems when the passenger in a car asked for directions to a bank. The driver signaled that he was being held at gunpoint, O’Brien told police. The news crew called police and followed the car until officers caught up. Police Lieutenant Thomas Stacho said the suspect was carrying a loaded handgun.
■ UNITED STATES
Basement fetches high price
A basement storage room in the famed Dakota apartment building in Manhattan fetched US$801,000 in a recent sale. High prices are nothing new for the Dakota, a gorgeous, gabled palace overlooking New York’s Central Park, best known as the home of John Lennon and the scene of his 1980 assassination. Yoko Ono still lives there and its apartments routinely sell for many millions of dollars. The room’s buyer, hedge fund manager John Angelo, said the price was reasonable, considering what he’s getting. The space is 74m² and has 6.1m high ceilings and two windows, he said, making it bigger than many apartments in Manhattan. Angelo said he plans to turn the room into a small gymnasium and open it up for use by other residents of the building.
■ UNITED STATES
Subway art worth US$15m
A mural in a Pittsburgh subway station is worth US$15 million, more than the cash-strapped transit agency expected and raising questions about how it should be cared for once it is removed in anticipation of the station’s demolition. “We did not expect it to be that much,” Port Authority of Allegheny County spokeswoman Judi McNeil said on Thursday. “We don’t have the wherewithal to be a caretaker of such a valuable piece.” The mural, by Romare Bearden, was installed in 1984. Bearden was paid US$90,000 for the mural, titled Pittsburgh Recollections. But it would cost the agency more than US$100,000 a year to insure the 18.29m-by-3.96m piece, McNeil said.
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
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
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number