■NEW ZEALAND
Kiddie disco gets too loud
A group of children rocking out to kiddie tracks at a kindergarten disco party were told to turn down the tunes or face a shut down of their party by noise control officials who raided the soiree. The noise abatement raid — called “absurd” by one teacher — happened on Friday night at One Tree Hill Kindergarten in Auckland. As parents and the gaggle of children blasted the theme song to Bob the Builder and the Chicken Dance, an irate neighbor spoiled the fun by calling noise control.
■CAMBODIA
Man arrested for child pics
A Japanese man has been arrested for allegedly taking nude photographs of at least six boys in the country’s popular seaside town of Sihanoukville, police said yesterday. Shunichi Nakagawa, 32, was seized on Sunday, accused of taking pornographic pictures of boys aged between 13 and 15, said Suon Sophan, deputy police chief for the town’s anti-trafficking and child protection unit.
■HONG KONG
Cabbie bites off finger
A Hong Kong cabbie bit off the fingertip of a drunken passenger who refused to clean up vomit from the taxi, a court report said yesterday. The fingertip was later recovered by police from the vomit and sewn back on, according to the report in the South China Morning Post. Taxi driver Hui Man-yu appeared on Monday in court after admitting inflicting grievous bodily harm on the passenger, Australian Caleb Chau. The 54-year-old was sentenced to 160 hours of community service. However, the court accepted that the trouble in the taxi ride in November last year was initiated by the passenger, rather than the driver. Hui claimed that he had only wanted Chau to clean up the mess that the passenger had made by vomiting in the taxi.
■VIETNAM
Glitter heads for Britain
Gary Glitter, the former British glam rock star who spent the past two years and nine months in a Vietnamese prison for sexually abusing minors, was released early yesterday morning and escorted to Ho Chi Minh City to board a flight for Britain. Glitter had been expected to be released at noon, but was let out early to avoid media waiting for him at the prison gates. He was scheduled to take a 4pm flight to London, his lawyer said on Monday.
■JAPAN
Wrong breast removed
A hospital said yesterday that doctors mistakenly removed a healthy woman’s left breast because of a mix-up in samples from tests for breast cancer. The woman, in her 40s, last year went for a mammogram at a hospital in the western city of Okayama and was told there was a possibility she had breast cancer. Doctors removed her breast. But a detailed examination of the tissue showed that she had a mastopathy, which includes symptoms similar to those of cancer but does not require surgery.
■JAPAN
Plane crashes on city street
A small plane crashed into a city street in the western part of the country yesterday, scattering debris across a neighborhood crowded with factories and restaurants. The two men aboard escaped with light injuries, and no one else was hurt. The Cessna slammed into a sidestreet beside a thoroughfare in Yao city, tearing off a wing and buckling its body nearly in half. The two men inside escaped the wreck and were taken to a hospital.
■GERMANY
Undertakers in murder suit
Two undertakers have been arrested in Bavaria on suspicion of killing a funeral home owner, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office in the southern city of Erlangen said on Monday. Andreas Quentin said authorities believed the two suspects, detained on Aug. 6 and Aug. 13, burned the body in a crematorium under a false name after a dispute over a business deal. The mass-market daily Bild reported that the victim, identified as 43-year-old Erich W., sold his funeral home to Michael S., 52, a rival in 2005. A dispute over the sale price arose when Michael S. was unable to come up with the sum.
■ISRAEL
Turtle on wheels gets going
Arava the disabled turtle is using her new set of wheels to get around in more ways than one. Officials at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo said that the 10-year-old spurred tortoise has begun mating since being fitted with a custom skateboard to overcome paralysis of her hind legs. The 25kg turtle is unable to move herself forward with her front legs alone. So the zoo’s staff built her a metal board with two wheels that can be strapped to her stomach.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Filesharing woman fined
A British woman has been ordered to pay more than £16,000 (US$29,700) to a US computer games company after illegally sharing its files online. The woman, who is not being named, is one of the first to be successfully targeted in the UK as part of the media industry’s battle with digital pirates. TopWare Interactive, claimed the woman made its game Dream Pinball 3D available to other Internet users in breach of the law. After a hearing at the patents county court in London, a judge ruled that she should pay TopWare more than £6,000 in damages and £10,000 in costs.
■SPAIN
Plant may be fined for leak
The Nuclear Safety Council has proposed a fine of up to 22.5 million euros (US$33 million) over a leak at a power plant, accusing operators on Monday of waiting three weeks to report it and downplaying the amount of contamination released. The Asco plant, located on the Ebro River, 28km upstream from the Mediterranean, had a leak in November, but plant operators did not detect it until March and then waited to notify regulators on April 4, the council said.
■ZAMBIA
President Mwanawasa dies
President Levy Mwanawasa died in a French hospital yesterday at 59, nearly two months after he was hospitalized for a stroke, the country’s vice president said. “It is with deep sorrow that I have to tell the people of Zambia that our president ... has passed away this morning,” Vice President Rupiah Banda said. He announced a weeklong period of national mourning. Mwanawasa had taken a turn for the worse on Monday. The president was evacuated to Paris after he collapsed on June 30 on the eve of an African Union summit in Egypt.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Child abuser sentenced
A pedophile who acted as a “librarian” for a global Internet child abuse ring was handed an indefinite jail term on Monday after one of the biggest undercover police investigations into online child abuse. Philip Thompson, 27, collected almost 250,000 indecent pictures of children as part of a global ring that reached 33 countries, Teesside crown court heard in northern England. More than 3,000 of the images found on Thompson’s computers were in the worst category of child abuse images.
■MEXICO
Dozens killed in gang war
At least 43 people died in violent attacks in the last three days in the northern state of Chihuahua, the scene of ongoing drug gang turf wars, police said on Monday. Thirteen males, aged between 18 and 41, died in separate attacks on Monday, mostly in the flashpoint city of Ciudad Juarez on the US border, local police said. Assassins killed nine people overnight on Sunday in the city, following the slaying of 21 people the previous night, including 14 in a massacre at a family gathering in the western Chihuahua town of Creel. A baby was one of the 14 murdered in Saturday’s shooting in Creel, believed to be part of a drug gang feud.
■ANTIGUA
Newlyweds’ killers arrested
A man and a teenager were charged on Monday in the killing of a British couple on their honeymoon, officials in the Caribbean island said. Kaniel Martin, 20, and Avie Howell, 17, appeared before a judge in the capital, St. John’s, on charges of murder, robbery and receiving stolen property. They were ordered held without bond. Neither suspect entered a plea to the charges, though the lawyer for Martin later said he would plead innocent. Benjamin and Catherine Mullany, both 31 and from Wales, were married on July 12 and went to Antigua for a two-week honeymoon. They were shot before dawn the day before they were meant to leave.
■CANADA
Rider hammers bus driver
Police say three people were injured when a woman attacked the driver of a Toronto public transit bus with a hammer. Police say Chelsea Simon, 23, boarded the bus on Monday morning and accused the driver of not stopping for her earlier on the route. They say she then began swinging the hammer and injured the bus driver. Police say passengers tackled the woman to the floor until police arrived. Police say two other people suffered minor injuries. Simon is charged with assault with a weapon.
■ARGENTINA
Gays can claim pensions
The government on Monday announced its first nationwide gay-rights measure: granting same-sex couples the right to claim their deceased partners’ pensions. Couples must prove they have been living together for at least five years to receive the benefit, Amado Boudo, executive director of the national social security administration, told local television reporters. Gay activists welcomed Monday’s announcement as the fruition of years of campaigning for the government to grant them the same rights as heterosexual married couples. Gay civil unions already are legal in five cities, including Buenos Aires. The Argentine capital has become one of the hotspots on the international gay-friendly tourist circuit, going head-to-head with Rio de Janeiro.
■ALGERIA
Islamists hit police school
More than 40 people were killed in a suicide attack yesterday morning on a police school at Issers in the Kabylie region, 60km east of Algiers, witnesses said. The attacker drove a car packed with explosives at the main entrance to the school as candidates for an entry exam were waiting outside, witnesses said. Civilians as well as police officers were among the victims they said. Authorities had not yet issued an announcement about the attack, but witnesses at the scene said that a major security operation was under way there. Yesterday’s attack comes as newspapers reported an attack on Sunday in which Islamist extremists killed 11 members of the security forces and a civilian.
‘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