■CHINA
Sexual harasser sentenced
A man has been given five months in detention for kissing a female colleague against her will, a local newspaper said yesterday, the first time punishment has been meted out under a new sexual harassment law. The man, a manager surnamed Liu, invited one of his new female staff into his office in Sichuan Province to “discuss work matters,” but then told her he wanted to be her boyfriend, the Beijing News said, citing a local newspaper. When the women turned Liu down, he turned off the lights, held her by the neck and kissed her, the report said. “Miss Chen screamed out and fought back. Colleagues next door heard her and dialed [the police],” the newspaper said. Liu was found guilty of “using force to act indecently towards a woman,” it added. China enacted its sexual harassment law in 2005. A 2005 survey cited in state media said that only 21 percent of women said they had never faced sexual harassment.
■MALAYSIA
Harassment course possible
The minister for women’s affairs wants to make it mandatory for office workers to be taught about sexual harassment in the workplace, an official said yesterday. Women, Family and Community Development Minister Ng Yen Yen said “only a handful of employers” have procedures in place to deal with sexual harassment complaints, and most victims fear losing their jobs if they report sexual harassment. “Right now it is up to the individual [employer] and it is not effective. We propose that it be compulsory for all human resource staff and their supervisors to know the code and undergo a certain course,” Ng was quoted as saying in the Star daily.
■INDONESIA
Pedophile suspect arrested
An Australian man wanted for pedophilia has been arrested on the resort island of Bali and will be sent back to Australia, police said yesterday. Paul Francis Callahan was arrested on Saturday at the house he rented in the tourist area of Kuta, Bali police deputy spokeswoman Sri Harniti said. “The arrest was made following an Interpol red notice that we received on June 13,” she said. Callahan is accused of molesting a 10-year-old boy in Australia. He left Australia in 2003 and moved to Bali, where he married an Indonesian woman, had a daughter and ran a surfwear shop. Bali detective police chief Erwin Chahara Rusmana said Callahan was not suspected of child sex offenses in Indonesia.
■CHINA
Olympic algae cleared
Foul-smelling green algae that has been plaguing China’s Olympic sailing venue has been cleared, state media said on Tuesday, after more than 1 million tonnes of the sludge was removed. Authorities had set a Tuesday deadline to clean up the algae bloom in Qingdao, drafting 10,000 soldiers and volunteers and hundreds of fishing boats to help with the mammoth task. After a month of working to remove the algae, which had hit about one third of the venue, two barriers have now been erected to keep any more algae out, the Xinhua news agency said.
■JAPAN
Boy hijacker arrested
Police arrested a boy yesterday for hijacking a bus with a knife on a major highway in central Japan, a police spokesman said. No one was hurt in the incident, which was resolved within an hour. The boy, who said he was 14 years old, admitted that he hijacked the bus in Okazaki, a city 250km southwest of Tokyo, the police spokesman said. The bus was traveling between Tokyo and Nagoya.
■SWEDEN
Rainbow collapses, 30 hurt
A theme park ride collapsed on Tuesday in the western city of Goteborg, injuring 30 people, officials said. Several people were thrown out of the swinging Rainbow ride at the Liseberg theme park and squeezed as the seating platform tipped to one side, a police spokeswoman said. The injuries ranged from bone fractures to shock, SOS Alarm rescue service spokeswoman Monica Grandin said. None of the injuries were life-threatening. The Rainbow, a spinning arm with a seating compartment on one end, appeared to have fallen about 3m. There were 36 people were onboard the ride at the time. The cause of the accident was under investigation. Liseberg is the biggest fun fair park in the Nordic region, with more than 30 different rides.
■RUSSIA
Tests confirm royal bones
DNA tests confirm that bones found last year belonged to two of the last tsar’s murdered children, Alexei and Maria, prosecutors said yesterday, as the country marked the 90th anniversary of their death. “Full results of DNA studies, using three genetic testing systems, confirm the hypothesis that the second grave contained the remains of Grand Duchess Maria and Tsarevich Alexei,” the prosecutor’s office investigative committee said in a statement. The announcement was made hours before ceremonies to mark the 90th anniversary of the murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his family by Bolshevik agents in the city of Yekaterinburg in the early hours of July 17, 1918. Russian Orthodox believers were expected to gather in their thousands for elaborate ceremonies remembering the execution of the family, were canonized as saints by the Russian Orthodox Church.
■GERMANY
WWII-era bomb detonated
Experts carried out a controlled explosion yesterday on a World War II bomb whose discovery forced the evacuation of some 5,000 Berlin residents, police said. The British bomb was found during construction work on Tuesday afternoon in the garden of a house in the Wilmersdorf district. Police said in a statement that experts blew up the bomb after closing part of a nearby highway as a precaution.
■UAE
US, UK navies seize drugs
Coalition warships seized 27 tonnes of narcotics over five months on Gulf patrols, cutting off possible funds for insurgents in Afghanistan, the US Navy said in a statement on Tuesday. The Navy said the drug busts along the region’s so called “Hash Highway” in the Persian Gulf were largely due to successful operations of the UK Royal Navy. Its marines and sailors intercepted 70 percent of the total narcotics haul. Drugs seized over five months included hashish, opiates, cocaine and amphetamines, the statement said. The commander of Royal Navy in the Middle East, Commodore Keith Winstanley, said the trafficking of illegal drugs has been “one of the gravest threats to the long term security of Afghanistan and a vital source of funding for the Taliban warlords.”
■RUSSIA
Former police chief killed
Armed men killed the former police chief of a small village in Ingushetia on Tuesday, Interfax news agency reported. “Unidentified men opened fire on Akhmet Murazbekov with an automatic weapon and disappeared from the scene,” Interfax quoted an Ingushetia police official as saying. Murazbekov was the former police chief in Karabulak, a village 20km north of the capital Magas.
■UNITED STATES
Derek may monitor racing
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger named actress and animal rights activist Bo Derek on Tuesday to a state commission overseeing horse racing. Derek, 51, was appointed to fill one of two vacant posts on the California Horse Racing Board, a position that requires confirmation by the state Senate and pays US$100 per diem. Derek is a horse lover who has lobbied Congress for the past five years to ban the slaughter of the animals. She also owns the pet care products company Bless the Beasts, which sells such items as dog shampoos, conditioner and fur polish.
■BRAZIL
Police kill kidnap victim
A man abducted in his car by an armed assailant in Rio de Janeiro was fatally shot by police as they attempted to rescue him. The victim, a 35-year-old office worker, and the 18-year-old who seized him were both killed late on Monday when police officers pursuing the car got into a gunfight with the kidnapper and hit them both several times. They were taken to hospital, where they died. Images of the shootout caught by a television camera crew showed the two officers had not acted properly and they would be punished, a police spokesman said.
■UNITED STATES
Septic truck and SUV collide
A septic truck collided with a sport utility vehicle (SUV) carrying farm workers in central California, sweeping both vehicles into an irrigation canal where seven people were feared dead. Divers pulled one male body from inside the truck late on Tuesday afternoon, a California Highway Patrol officer said. The vehicles careened into the Delta-Mendota Canal about 24km southwest of Modesto after the truck slammed into the SUV at 12:21pm on Tuesday. Distraught relatives and friends of the crash victims lined the canal banks, sobbing as divers probed its depths.
■UNITED STATES
No release for Manson killer
A California parole board on Tuesday denied a “compassionate release” for former Charles Manson family member Susan Atkins, 60, who after 37 years in jail for multiple murder is dying from terminal cancer. The California Board of Parole Hearings issued its decision without explanation. Atkins was found guilty of taking part in the murders of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and six other people during the Manson followers’ 1969 killing spree. Los Angeles Country District Attorney Steve Cooley said on Monday in a letter to the parole board that Atkins, who is reportedly dying from brain cancer, could receive “appropriate, dignified and compassionate medical care” within the prison system. In May, doctors reportedly predicted Atkins had six months to live.
■UNITED STATES
Man faces life over crash
A man found guilty of murder for causing a Los Angeles train crash that left 11 people dead should be jailed for life without parole, a jury recommended on Tuesday. Juan Manuel Alvarez, 29, was convicted last month at Los Angeles Superior Court following a two-month trial. Prosecutors said Alvarez had deliberately caused the accident on the Metrolink commuter line on Jan. 26, 2005, to get attention. Defense lawyers claimed that he had parked his car on the tracks to commit suicide but was unable to remove it after he changed his mind at the last minute. Alvarez’s car was hit by a Los Angeles-bound train, which derailed and then ploughed into a train traveling in the opposite direction.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
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
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