■ INDIA
Lonely gorilla seeks mate
Polo needs a mate after eight years on his own, but a worldwide search for a suitable match has drawn a frustrating blank, Chamarajendra Zoological Gardens officials said yesterday. The 36-year-old western lowland gorilla has been at the Mysore zoo since 1995 and alone since his mate Sumathi died in 2000. “We try to put play items in all the enclosures and we want Polo to be active but there is no substitute for a companion,” the zoo director said. Polo was brought to Mysore from Dublin Zoo to mate with Sumathi but they did not have any offspring because she was already 46 when they were paired up.
■ JAPAN
Blind date proves dangerous
A blind date went horribly wrong for a senior police officer who was run over by a car and robbed, police said yesterday. The policeman in Fukuoka Prefecture met the woman through a dating site for mobile phones. She asked him to meet her in a supermarket car park, where he was confronted by six men who were allegedly working with the woman. The gang rammed the policeman with a car, causing injuries to his legs that took two weeks to heal, and forced him to hand over ¥254,000 (US$2,540), police said. Gang leader Masanori Ishikawa, 39, was arrested on Monday, police said.
■ SINGAPORE
‘FEER’ to appeal ruling
The Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER) is to appeal against a court ruling that it defamed former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀) and his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) in a 2006 article, the magazine’s lawyer said yesterday. Peter Low said a “notice of appeal” had been filed. High Court Justice Woo Bih Li ruled in a written judgment last month that FEER, which is banned in the city-state, had defamed the pair.
■ AUSTRALIA
Undertaker ‘needs help’
An undertaker who got drunk and followed a woman in his hearse, honking the horn and shouting threats, was making a “cry for help,” his lawyer told a Sydney court in a sentencing submissions on Tuesday. Adam Lee’s life revolved around Caring Funerals and his work for the Rotary club, lawyer Roland Bonnicci said. But he acknowledged that Lee, 37, did binge drink on weekends and his “mental state is deteriorating,” the Australian Associated Press reported. Lee was found guilty earlier this year of driving while disqualified, drunken driving, driving in a menacing manner and not obeying police instructions. He will be sentenced today.
■ CHINA
Four jailed for prostitution
Four men have been jailed for up to five-and-a-half years for running a male prostitution service in Zhejiang Province that sold sex to other men, Xinhua news agency said yesterday. Zheng Shuyi registered the Web site nannanboy.com and advertised it as a spa, but he used it to recruit male prostitutes, Xinhua said. He sold sex for up to 400 yuan (US$60) a session, the report said. Zheng’s defense had tried to argue that the law against prostitution only applied to women selling sex. The court disagreed and said the law did not define the sex, Xinhua said.
■ JAPAN
Aso slams nightlife critics
Prime Minister Taro Aso hit back at critics yesterday who questioned his nightly ventures to high-end bars and restaurants when the country is on the verge of recession. “Fortunately, I have money. I pay by myself,” Aso said. “It’s my style.”
■ FRANCE
Sarkozy battles voodoo doll
President Nicolas Sarkozy has threatened to sue a publishing company unless it withdraws a Sarkozy doll that comes with a “voodoo manual” instructing readers to plant pins in it, his lawyer said on Tuesday. The doll is emblazoned with some of Sarkozy’s most famous quotes such as “Get lost you pathetic arsehole” — his words to a bystander who refused to shake his hand at a farm show last year. Readers are encouraged to plant pins in the quotes. “Nicolas Sarkozy has instructed me to remind you that, whatever his status and fame, he has exclusive and absolute rights over his own image,” lawyer Thierry Herzog wrote to publishers K&B in a letter published by newspaper Le Monde. Herzog said Sarkozy would sue the publishing firm if it didn’t respond and pull the product. According to a widespread belief, voodoo worshippers can plant pins in dolls representing their enemies to curse them.
■ ITALY
Support surges for author
British authors Martin Amis and Ian McEwan are among several literary figures to rally in support of Roberto Saviano, author of a bestselling mafia expose who now fears for his life, the Italian daily La Repubblica said on Tuesday. Americans Jonathan Franzen and Jonathan Safran Foer, Jose Saramago of Portugal, and Spaniard Javier Marias have also joined an appeal launched on Monday by six Nobel prizewinners to urge the Italian government to assume its “responsibility” to protect Saviano, the paper said. Altogether some 100,000 people have joined the petition, prompted by Saviano’s announcement last week that he would flee Italy after learning that the southern Camorra mafia want him dead by Christmas. Saviano, 28, whose book Gomorrah has been translated into 42 languages, has lived under police protection for two years. “It is intolerable that all this can happen in Europe, and in 2008,” wrote the six Nobel honorees including peace laureates Mikhail Gorbachev and Desmond Tutu. “With our signatures ... we call the state to its responsibilities,” they said. “The state must make every effort possible to protect him and defeat the Camorra.”
■ ETHIOPIA
US denies torturing suspects
The US on Tuesday denied accusations that its officers tortured terror suspects detained in Ethiopian jails after Ethiopia’s 2006 invasion of Somalia. Rights groups said US and other intelligence services interrogated several people detained by Kenya’s forces on its border with Somalia and transferred to Ethiopia, as they fled Ethiopia’s war with Somali Islamist rebels. Several detainees said they were denied access to legal counsel and their consular representatives as well as tortured by US interrogators. “The US takes every effort to ensure that any treatment of prisoners is handled in a humane way and any extraditions not be done for people who are subject to torture,” US Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Labor David Kramer told journalists in Addis Ababa. “We stress the importance of transparency and the respect of human rights,” he said.
■ SOMALIA
Forces free ship from pirates
Security forces in the semi-autonomous Puntland region have freed a hijacked Indian ship after a gun battle, capturing four pirates in the process, an official said yesterday. “Our forces successfully concluded an operation to free the Indian dhow without any casualties,” Ali Abdi Aware, state-minister for Puntland said. The ship and its crew were due to arrive in the port of Bosasso yesterday morning, Aware said.
■ MEXICO
Cuba invites Calderon
Havana on Tuesday invited Mexico’s president to visit Cuba in a thawing of relations a day after Mexico agreed to deport Cubans illegally on its territory. The visit, for which a date has not yet been set, would be the first by a Mexican president to Cuba in seven years. Cuba-Mexico ties suffered under the 2000-2006 presidency of Vicente Fox, when Mexico voted at the UN in favor of monitoring human rights in Cuba. Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque passed on the invitation from Cuban President Raul Castro to Mexican President Felipe Calderon at his Mexico City residence on Tuesday, a government statement said.
■ UNITED STATES
Woman tries to arrest Rove
An anti-war protester confronted Karl Rove, former aide to US President George W. Bush, while he spoke at a San Francisco mortgage bankers’ meeting. A statement by the group Code Pink identified the woman as 58-year-old Janine Boneparth, who tried to handcuff Rove in what she called a citizen’s arrest for “treason.” Rove elbowed Boneparth away as she was escorted off the stage.
■ UNITED STATES
Two cops shot in subway
A Dominican man being arrested in a New York City subway station struggled with two officers, grabbed one of their guns and shot both of them during the Tuesday evening rush, police said. A lieutenant working at the Queens subway station shot the suspect in his legs and torso as he tried to flee, police said. The two plainclothes transit officers wore bulletproof vests protecting their chests. Officer Shane Farina, who was shot near his sternum and suffered a broken rib, was in critical but stable condition on Tuesday night. Officer Jason Maass, who was shot in the lower back, was in stable condition. The suspect, identified as Raul Nunez, 32, was in police custody at a hospital and his condition wasn’t disclosed.
■ UNITED STATES
Judge blocks retrial
US District Judge Benjamin Settle ruled on Tuesday in Tacoma, Washington, that the Army could not retry an Iraq War objector on several key charges because that would violate his constitutional protection against double jeopardy. Settle said the government could not retry 1st Lieutenant Ehren Watada on charges of missing his unit’s deployment to Iraq in June 2006 and for denouncing President George W. Bush and the war. The judge held that to do so would violate Watada’s Fifth Amendment rights by trying him twice for the same charges. The Army said the Fort Lewis commanding general would review the ruling before commenting.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Bomber has cancer
The Libyan man convicted of bombing a trans-Atlantic airliner over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988, killing 270 people, has “advanced stage” prostate cancer, his lawyer said on Tuesday. Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet Al-Megrahi, 56, is serving life with a minimum term of 27 years in a Scottish prison for blowing up Pan Am flight 103 from London to New York but is bidding to have his 2001 conviction overturned. His solicitor Tony Kelly said Megrahi, an ex-intelligence agent, was diagnosed with prostate cancer after hospital tests last month. “Unfortunately, the disease has spread to other parts of his body and is therefore at an advanced stage,” Kelly said. Megrahi has consistently denied being behind the attack, the biggest mass murder in British legal history.
‘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