■PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Police under curfew
A nighttime curfew has been placed on all police barracks in Port Moresby after investigators discovered a recent bank robbery was planned inside one of the barracks, media reported. The 6pm to 8am curfew will last for three months, the National newspaper said yesterday. Metropolitan police commander Fred Yakasa said he hoped the curfew would minimize unlawful activities inside the eight barracks. “Wild parties, consumption of illegal drugs and other unlawful activities had given the police barracks a very bad name. This must stop,” Yakasa told the newspaper. “Now we have cockroaches, rats, pigs, dogs, devils, chickens and you name it; it is a place for just about anybody to walk in and out, and I intend to stop these kinds of unlawful and illegal movements in and out of [police] barracks.”
■JAPAN
Bomb threat was a ‘prank’
A South Korean man who threatened to bomb Air China planes during the opening of the Olympic Games has told police that he was only playing a prank, a report said yesterday. Lee Hyon-sa, a 33-year-old company worker who lives in Japan, turned himself over to police near Tokyo on Sunday and admitted he made the threat that caused an Air China flight to turn around mid-air, a police spokesman said. Lee told police during interrogation that he sent the threat by e-mail “to fool around,” Jiji Press said, quoting police sources.
■BANGLADESH
Teacher fired for cutting hair
A teacher has been sacked after he chopped off chunks of his students’ hair to punish them for being naughty, the school’s headmaster said yesterday. Aminul Islam said the teacher started snipping because he could not control the pupils, aged 14 and 15. “Faruq Hossain took out a pair of scissors and began cutting his students’ hair. In total he gave 14 students a haircut, one after the other,” he said. “They were shocked and stunned.” Authorities investigated the incident at the Satkhira government school following complaints from parents, Islam said. “He has been banned from the school. He’s not allowed anywhere near the premises.”
■SRI LANKA
Troops attack rebels
National troops killed 115 Tamil Tiger rebels in weekend fighting in the far north of the island, the military said yesterday, as government forces continued their push into the rebels’ northern stronghold. Government jets also bombed rebel positions in rebel-held areas in the north, military officials said. “Troops had killed 60 LTTE [Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam] terrorists and 28 were wounded from Sunday’s confrontations,” said military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara, adding that three soldiers were also killed and 12 wounded. The LTTE said air raids had killed two civilians, including a school teacher.
■NEW ZEALAND
Chopper crashes in forest
A helicopter carrying conservation workers crashed yesterday in a thick forest on South Island, injuring two people, a rescuer said. The Hughes 369 was carrying a pilot and three conservation workers when it went down in the Haast-Paringa cattle track in the South Westland region, rescue helicopter pilot Steve Batchelor said. The helicopter did not catch fire on impact, “but it was badly broken up after smashing through the forest canopy to the ground,” he said. The pilot suffered a broken leg, and one of the conservation workers suffered a suspected broken leg. Both were flown to a hospital in Greymouth for treatment, he said.
■ISRAEL
Barak against invasion
Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that even if Israel invades Gaza, it will still have to deal with the Islamic Hamas regime afterward. Barak has often said that an Israeli invasion is nearing. But in an interview on Sunday on Channel 10 TV, Barak played down its potential for the first time. He said even if Israeli forces go into Gaza and destroy the Hamas regime “down to the last office and the last activist,” he said, in the aftermath “we would have to achieve a truce, and we would have to deal with the same parties as before.”
■TURKEY
Kurd TV set for next year
The state broadcaster will launch a Kurdish-language television channel next year, its director said in an interview published yesterday. The 24-hour channel will also air programs in Arabic, Farsi and Zazaki, a Kurdish dialect, the head of Turkish Radio and Television (TRT), Ibrahim Sahin, told the Aksam newspaper. “Our objective is to reach not only our Kurdish and Arab citizens but also regional countries,” Sahin said. Seeking to boost Turkey’s bid to join the EU, TRT launched 30-minute weekly broadcasts in Kurdish in 2004.
■ITALY
Rich flaunting not tolerated
Already victims of shrinking spending power and sky-rocketing rates for renting deckchairs, Italians have descended on their beaches this month in a surly mood, and the sight of a flotilla as it carved a swath through alarmed swimmers was enough to spark a near riot on Friday at the packed Capriccioli beach. Hostilities erupted in Sardinia when Flavio Briatore, co-owner of Queens Park Rangers soccer club, the manager of the Renault Formula One team, came ashore from a yacht to inaugurate his new restaurant, which opened on Friday. Briatore and his new bride, the TV showgirl Elisabetta Gregoraci, were met with grumbling from sunbathers as they hopped off the first dinghy, rising to whistles and shouts when the Italian newsreader Emilio Fede climbed off the second, while “terrorized children wailed between the waves,” reported La Stampa. Yelling “Shame! Louts! Go home!”, a mob formed to greet the third dinghy, attempting to push it back out to sea, as mothers filled their children’s buckets with water to sling at the passengers and wet sand bombs were hurled.
■IRAN
Mashai calls for friendship
Media are quoting the country’s vice president as saying Iranians are “friends of all people in the world — even Israelis.” It’s a rare comment from a government official in Iran, whose president regularly calls for Israel’s destruction. Several newspapers and the official Web site of Iran’s tourism agency yesterday attributed the comment to Vice President Esfandiar Rahim Mashai, who is in charge of Iranian tourism and historical sites. It’s believed to be the first time an official Iranian government Web site has carried an expression of sympathy by an Iranian vice president toward Israelis.
■ISRAEL
Forces use ‘skunk bombs’
Security forces have started to use liquid “skunk bombs” to disperse demonstrators in the occupied West Bank, police said on Sunday. Use of the stinking liquid has been given the green light by medical and legal authorities, police said. It can be hurled by hand or with a special device, forcing most demonstrators to disperse and rush off to change their clothes because of the unbearable stench.
■UNITED STATES
Isaac Hayes dies at 65
Isaac Hayes, the baldheaded, baritone-voiced soul crooner who laid the groundwork for disco and whose Theme From Shaft won both Academy and Grammy awards, died on Sunday afternoon after he collapsed near a treadmill, the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office said. Hayes, 65, was pronounced dead at Baptist East Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, an hour after he was found by a family member, authorities said. The cause of death was not immediately known. His music came to be known as urban-contemporary and paved the way for disco as well as romantic crooners like Barry White. His career hit another high in 1997 when he became the voice of Chef, the sensible school cook and devoted ladies man on the animated TV show South Park.
■UNITED STATES
Three killed in bus crash
A casino bus full of tourists overturned in northwestern Mississippi on Sunday, killing three people and injuring several others. The bus belonged to Harrah’s Tunica and was carrying 43 people when it flipped over in a median at an intersection in Tunica, Tunica County spokesman Larry Liddell said. The identities of the passengers who were killed were not immediately released. Twenty-seven injured people were taken to Baptist Memorial Hospital in Southaven, spokesman Thomas Whitehead said. One was in critical condition and five were being held for observation. Four people were taken to the Regional Medical Center in Memphis, Tennessee, about 56km to the north. Three remained in critical condition late on Sunday; one was ischarged, spokeswoman Sandy Snell said.
■UNITED STATES
Police suspect viper stolen
Police are investigating the disappearance of a venomous snake from an aquarium in Galveston, Texas, and say they believe the reptile has been stolen. The 25cm African bush viper was last seen on Thursday evening at the Moody Gardens aquarium. Officials say the fastener holding a padlock on the snake exhibit appeared to have been tampered with and damaged. The same snake went missing for two days last month. Workers found it hiding on a metal screen sealing the top of its enclosure, but cannot explain how the snake got up there.
■UNITED STATES
Drivers stop to pick cash
Police near Los Angeles say motorists stopped in speeding traffic to gather up bills on Sunday after a man on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle dropped a bag of cash. They took off when the California Highway Patrol arrived. The biker told authorities a computer bag he was carrying ripped and spilled money across the Interstate 10 highway, where people were driving in 100kph traffic. Highway Patrol Officer Anthony Martin says he does not know how much cash was in the bag or how much drivers made away with.
■MEXICO
Man leaves home by forklift
A 310kg man once considered the world’s most obese person left his home for the first time in five months on Sunday with the aid of a forklift and a platform truck. Manuel Uribe traveled to the shore of a lake in northern Mexico without ever leaving his specially designed bed. A forklift hoisted the bed onto the truck, which then hauled him to the lake, where he snacked on fish and vegetables and joked with a local boat operator. Uribe used to weight 560kg, but dropped to 310kg as of June after more than two years of steady dieting. He did not say what his current weight is.
‘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