■ INDIA
Public smoking banned
New Delhi imposed a new ban on smoking in public places on Thursday, four years after a largely ignored earlier prohibition saw people continue to puff away in restaurants, clubs and bars. One in three smokes some form of tobacco, officials say, and a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in February this year said one in every 10 deaths in the country from 2010 would be smoking-related.
■ INDIA
Stampede death toll rises
The death toll from a stampede of Hindu worshippers at a temple in northwestern town of Jodhpur has risen to 224, officials said yesterday. Jodhpur’s top administrative official Kiran Soni Gupta said by telephone that 77 more deaths reported by relatives were confirmed by the local administration, adding to the earlier death toll of 147. Doctors at two state-run hospitals where 54 injured were admitted for treatment said the condition of two wounded was “critical.”
■ RUSSIA
Daily links Ukraine, Georgia
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko sold arms to Georgia to help it fight the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia and Russia, the Russian daily Izvestia reported yesterday, citing documents it had seen. Over the last two years, Ukraine had sold Georgia seven Buk-M1 air-defense systems, Izvestia said. Although the weapons systems were indispensable for the protection of Ukrainian strategic sites, Yushchenko had allowed nearly half of his country’s own stocks to be sold off, wrote the paper. Ukraine had also sold Georgia 200 Strela and Igla air-defense systems, Soviet-era T-72 assault tanks and Grad rocket-launchers, the paper said. These rocket-launchers, “chosen with the help of the United States” had been used by the Georgian army on Aug. 8 when it launched its bid to take back control of South Ossetia by force, Izvestia said.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Holocaust denier arrested
An Australian jailed in Germany and Austria for expounding his view that there were no mass killings of Jews in World War II has been arrested at London’s Heathrow Airport, news reports said yesterday. Former high school teacher Gerald Frederick Toben, 64, was refused bail in London’s Westminster Magistrate’s court and was to appear again today for an extradition hearing, Australia’s ABC Radio reported. Toben was arrested under a EU arrest warrant because he is wanted by the District Court in Mannheim, Germany, on charges of publishing material on the Internet of an anti-Semitic and/or revisionist nature.
■ GERMANY
Jobless man hands in cash
An unemployed construction worker found a package filled with 16,000 euros (US$22,600) in cash and items of gold jewelry beside a busy road — and turned it over to authorities, police said on Wednesday. The 56-year-old father of a disabled son, whose family relies on state unemployment benefits of about 600 euros per month, spotted the large brown envelope while cycling along a road near Ermstedt in the eastern state of Thuringia, a police spokesman said. “It would have come in handy for the heating bill. But my conscience got the better of me. It was a hard decision to go to the police,” the finder, Thomas Liedtke, was quoted as saying in Bild newspaper. The origins of the money were not known, the police said.
■ FRANCE
Manual on radicals issued
Security officials from several European countries have developed a manual to help prison authorities prevent their jails from becoming incubators for Muslim extremists. The manual, developed by France, Germany and Austria, includes signs that may indicate that a prisoner was becoming radicalized, including the presence of a growing beard. The document was distributed at a two-day closed-door conference of European security experts that ended in Paris on Wednesday. Prisons “can be a facilitator and an accelerator” of radicalization and inmates are often “strongly destabilized” and therefore malleable, said Christophe Chaboud, head of France’s Anti-Terrorist Coordination Unit. The manual contains input from European and other security officials, including New York City police, Chaboud said. For security reasons, there are no plans to make its contents public. Hugues de Suremain, a spokesman for the International Prison Observatory, voiced fears the manual could further stigmatize Muslim inmates, who lack the range of religious benefits provided to Christians.
■ MEXICO
‘Condom-mobile’ robbed
Missing in the country: 5,000 condoms, sound equipment and a motor used to inflate a giant prophylactic, all stolen from a “condom-mobile” used to promote HIV/AIDS awareness. The coordinator of an HIV/AIDS awareness tour, Polo Gomez, said the truck was taken on Sunday from its parking spot in front of a friend’s house in Mexico City. It was recovered on Wednesday in a shopping mall parking lot in a northern suburb — minus the condoms and the equipment. Gomez said the thieves left some 800 HIV tests and a 7m inflatable prophylactic, which were also in the vehicle. The truck wasn’t hard to locate. It features painted images of a peeled banana, the exposed part shaped like a condom.
■ MEXICO
Fattest man to get married
Manuel Uribe, the world’s fattest man in last year’s Guinness Book of Records, said on Wednesday that he would wed this month, after losing nearly half his original weight. “It will be a hefty wedding, on a large scale, but with a low-calorie banquet,” the 43-year-old said. Uribe, who lives in his bed, in February said he had dropped 230kg from 590kg. He said he would marry a widow named Claudia, to whom he has been engaged for two years, on October 26 at home in Monterrey. The media-friendly man expanded his wedding plans after offers of sponsorship from international magazines, television stations and local mayors who offered a cake for 400 guests.
■ MEXICO
Decapitations, bodies found
Police found a headless body and the head of another person, as well as nine other bodies in the north of the country on Wednesday in the latest spate of gruesome killings in the country. The decapitated body of a man in his 30s lay alongside its head in an abandoned house in the center of the volatile city of Ciudad Juarez, bordering the US, said Alejandro Pariente, spokesman for Chihuahua State authorities. Two dogs were found playing with the head of another person in the municipality of Casas Grandes in the same state, forensic services said. The bodies of six other men and one women were found in other areas of the northern state on Wednesday, authorities said.
■ UNITED STATES
Skeleton sells for US$500
Richards’ Auction Gallery in Tipton, Indiana, had one interesting item up for sale this week just in time for Halloween: A real human skeleton. The bones, wired together to keep them in place, were sold for US$500 on Tuesday. The winning bidder then donated the skeleton — believed to be that of a European man — to a forensics center for research. Auctioneer Tim Richards found the skeleton among furniture and boxed items he collected from New Castle for the auction. The bones had apparently been someone’s macabre decoration.
■ VENEZUELA
Opposition leader killed
Authorities in Caracas are investigating the fatal shooting of a student leader who helped organize protests against constitutional amendments proposed by President Hugo Chavez. Julio Soto, a student leader at the University of Zulia, was killed on Wednesday by unidentified gunmen in the western city of Maracaibo. Local Police Chief Jose Gonzalez said he believes Soto was specifically targeted because the assailants sprayed his vehicle with gunfire and then fled without taking anything. But Justice Minister Tarek El Aissami said authorities have not yet determined if the killing was politically motivated.
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
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
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