■SINGAPORE
Smugglers spared death
Two Malaysians and a Singaporean convicted of trafficking heroin escaped death sentences after prosecutors reduced the charges, news reports said yesterday. The three were nabbed after smuggling 18.4g of heroin into the city-state from Johor, a total above the 15g threshold that ordinarily carries mandatory capital punishment under the city-state’s stringent drug laws. Deputy Public Prosecutor Leong Wing Tuck told the Straits Times that the charges were reduced after discussions with defense lawyers, but he did not elaborate. Two of the trio pleaded guilty on Friday in the High Court to ferrying 14.99g, while the third admitted possessing the same amount. The Malaysians each received 20 years in prison and 15 strokes of the cane, while the Singaporean was sentenced to 23 years and ordered to receive 15 strokes.
■CHINA
Bus plunges into ravine
A bus plunged into a ravine in a central province, killing 15 people, the Xinhua news agency said on Friday. All of the other 20 people aboard were injured when the bus drove off a mountain road in central Henan Province. Twelve sustained serious injuries, Xinhua said, including an 8-year old boy; five people were classified as in critical condition. The cause of the accident in Mianchi County is still being investigated, but Xinhua said difficult mountain roads caused the bus to lose control. On Wednesday three locals were critically injured and a Croatian coach was taken to the hospital following a collision in Beijing between a bus from the Olympic athletes’ village and a van on the way to the Olympic rowing park.
■SOUTH KOREA
Police hose protesters
Police hosed protesters with water laced with blue dye and mobilized specially-trained plainclothes officers to break up an anti-government demonstration late on Friday and early yesterday, witnesses said. The Seoul Police Agency said it had arrested 157 people on charges of staging illegal demonstrations in central Seoul. There were no immediate reports of injuries. Some 5,500 people showed up for the 100th candle-lit rally to protest against the resumption of US beef imports and against policies of President Lee Myung-Bak of the conservative Grand National Party, police said.
■INDONESIA
Train crash kills nine
Police and railway officials say at least 9 people died and dozens were injured when a slow-moving passenger train hit a parked cargo locomotive on Sumatra island. Zakaria, a train company spokesman who goes by a single name, says the train conductor realized the trains were about to crash but was unable to stop. He says seven passengers and two railway employees died, while 27 were seriously hurt. He says investigators have started questioning railway officials to determine what went wrong.
■MALAYSIA
Huge crowd cheers Anwar
A huge crowd cheered opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim yesterday as he registered for a by-election to return him to parliament, the next step in his plan to become prime minister. The Aug. 26 ballot in Anwar’s home state of Penang is also seen as a test of his popularity after a young male aide accused him of sodomy — the same charge that saw him jailed a decade ago. Some 30,000 supporters shouted Anwar’s battle cry of “Reformasi” or “Reform”, and waved party flags, facing off against 5,000 government supporters and trading taunts and insults. At least 3,000 police were deployed to keep the peace.
■ITALY
Kiss in a car, pay US$735
Mayors have issued a series of bizarre by-laws including a 500 euro (US$735) fine for kissing in cars in Eboli and a 250 euro fine for building sandcastles on the beach at Eraclea. Encouraged by a crackdown on crime and spurred by a decree giving extra powers, mayors have banned a myriad of pet hates. Smoking on the beach at Oristano in Sardinia attracts a 360 euro fine, while anyone fleeing to the mountains of Alto Adige should resist picking mushrooms or pay 113 euros. Wearing noisy wooden clogs or wandering off the beach in a bikini in Capri is forbidden, as is mowing lawns in Forte di Marmi on weekends.
■ITALY
At least five die in storms
At least five people died in a lightning strike, drowning, electrocution, high winds and the downing of a tree as storms struck northern Italy, Poland and Austria. A 10-year-old boy died on Friday in Turin, Italy, after being hit by lightning while a 37-year-old Italian man drowned off Genoa the same day when he was swamped by high waves in the Mediterranean. A woman, 41, was killed near St Stefan, Austria, when she was hit by a falling tree while hiking. The group she was with took cover under the tree when it began to hail. It fell on her in front of her husband and daughter.
■UNITED NATIONS
Applications ‘discriminatory’
The UN’s Committee for the Eradication of Racial Discrimination on Friday expressed concern on German state Baden-Wuerttemberg’s citizenship application questions targeted at Muslims. “The Committee recommends that the Federal Government encourage the use of questionnaires without discriminatory content, for all applicants for citizenship,” said the committee. Baden-Wuerttemberg, home to car maker Daimler’s Mercedes Benz, requires citizens of the 57 member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference to answer specific questions when they apply for German citizenship.
■ENGLAND
Police want new bras
Bullet-proof bras should be made available to female police officers, a leading police figure said, newspapers reported yesterday. The new bras, which have recently been handed to front-line female German police officers, come with the word “police” in capital letters emblazoned around the elastic band. Julie Nesbit, chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales’ Central Constables’ Committee, called for the sports-bra style garments to be introduced. “If it is something that is going to give women better protection, then we should see if that is something we can get hold of,” she said. Regular bullet-proof vests, while stopping the force of a gunshot, pushed the plastic and metal parts of women’s bras into their flesh, causing injury.
■YEMEN
Police find terrorist cell
Security officials say they have uncovered a second al-Qaeda terrorist cell during raids along the country’s southern coast. A press statement from the security force in Hadramawt Province says police raided a home in the city of al-Mukalla and found weapons, rockets and explosives. Several people were detained. Friday’s raid was part of a security operation that began a week ago. The most dramatic episode was a shootout on Monday that killed five militants and two soldiers. Thirty suspected al-Qaeda members have been arrested. A security official said on Thursday that some suspects confessed to planning attacks on oil facilities in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
■UNITED STATES
Glasses lead to jackpot
Bobby Guffey usually plays the same combination of numbers representing the birthdays of his five children. But he left his glasses at home when he bought the winning ticket on Aug. 6, accidentally entering the last number as 48 instead of 46, the Journal Gazette newspaper reported on Friday. The Hoosier Lotto ticket ended up being worth US$3 million. Guffey, who’s from the northeastern Indiana town of Roanoke, said he didn’t realize he’d used the wrong number combination until he had left the Huntington service station where he bought it. He went back inside to buy a ticket with his usual numbers and that ticket won him US$1,000 to go along with the jackpot.
■UNITED STATES
Buchenwald discoverer dies
James Hoyt, one of four US soldiers who discovered the Buchenwald concentration camp as World War II neared its end, has died. Hoyt’s wife, Doris, said he died on Monday in his sleep at home in rural Oxford, Iowa. He was 83. The cause of death was not immediately determined. Hoyt served in the Army’s 6th Armored Division during World War II, earning a Bronze Star. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge, the bloodiest battle fought by US troops in World War II. Buchenwald, one of the largest concentration camps established by Nazi Germany, was liberated in April 1945.
■CANADA
Mad cow case detected
A new case of mad cow disease has been detected in the western Canadian province of Alberta, the government’s Food Inspection Agency announced on Friday. The degenerative ailment known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was discovered in a six-year-old slaughtered cow, but authorities offered assurances that no part of the animal has entered the food chain. It was the 14th case of mad cow disease discovered in Canada since 2003.
■UNITED STATES
Self-cleaning toilets sold
City officials have finally gotten rid of five high-tech, self-cleaning toilets that cost Seattle US$5 million — but sold online for just US$12,549. The city installed the modernistic stand-alone toilets four years ago, hoping they would provide tourists and the homeless a place to do their business while downtown. But they became better known for drug use and prostitution than for relief. Neighbors and analysts said they were less cost-effective than regular public restrooms and, in May, the City Council voted to sell them on eBay. After a failed first attempt, when a US$89,000 minimum didn’t attract a single bid, the city revised its strategy in hopes of sparking a bidding free-for-all. But despite more than 9,000 combined page views, only 148 bids were cast. One of the five toilets, which currently graces the downtown waterfront, sold for US$4,899, but the average sale was just over US$2,510.
■UNITED STATES
Storm to lose strength
The sixth tropical storm of this year’s Atlantic hurricane season was heading for Haiti yesterday where heavy rains could cause mudslides and flash floods, the US National Hurricane Center said. Computer models showed Tropical Storm Fay emerging somewhere near south Florida by tomorrow. The storm was not projected by the Miami-based hurricane center to strengthen into a hurricane. The high mountains of Hispaniola and the amount of time it seemed destined to spend over land in Cuba would most likely drain it of energy.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema