■ JAPAN
Cup Noodles recalled
Nissin Food Products Co said yesterday it was recalling half a million cups of instant noodles over fears of insecticide contamination in the latest food safety scare to rock the country’s consumers. A 67-year-old woman vomited and felt numbness on her tongue after eating Nissin’s Cup Noodle this week in the Tokyo suburb of Fujisawa, the city’s health office said late on Thursday. The product was made at a Nissin factory in Japan. A series of previous scares have involved food imported from China. The health office said on inspecting the Cup Noodle they had discovered paradichlorobenzene, the key chemical in bug repellent, but no puncture or other abnormality in the cup. Nissin was voluntarily recalling around 500,000 cups made on the same factory line the same day, a company spokesman said.
■ CHINA
Woman sentenced to death
A court has sentenced a Ugandan woman to death with a two-year reprieve for drug trafficking, hoping to send a strong message to would-be smugglers, state media said yesterday. Awor Ocer Lucy, 42, was sentenced at Guangzhou’s Intermediate People’s Court on Thursday for trying to smuggle 2kg of heroin through the city’s airport in April, the China Daily said. Death sentences with reprieves are usually commuted to life in jail. The court also sentenced a drug smuggler from Benin and another from Nigeria to life in jail, while a Philippine woman was handed a 15-year term, the paper said. The court said a sharp increase in drug smuggling by foreigners over the past two years had made it necessary to hand down the tough sentences. “The verdicts [will] sound alarm bells for foreign smugglers,” said court spokesman Li Zhongyuan, according to the paper.
■ RUSSIA
Children kill zoo kangaroo
Police in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don say three children aged 10 to 12 have admitted killing a 10-month-old kangaroo at the city’s zoo. The kangaroo and several seagulls were killed over the weekend. Rostov police spokesman Alexei Polyansky said on Thursday that the two boys and a girl admitted to the killings. He did not say how the animals were killed, but Russian news reports said they were beaten. Because the children are minors, their parents could be required to pay fines equivalent to the estimated value of the dead animals — 115,000 rubles (US$4,300). The zoo’s deputy director, Nina Yevtushenko, said its other seven kangaroos are in a state of shock: “In contrast to people, they feel the pain of their relatives.”
■ IVORY COAST
Toxic dumper jailed
A court jailed a Nigerian man for 20 years for the 2006 dumping of hundreds of tonnes of toxic waste from an international oil trader that killed at least 16 people and left more than 100,000 needing treatment. Salomon Ugborugbo, 39, owned a local company whose trucks collected the eye-stinging waste offloaded from the Dutch-based company’s ship and dumped it at 17 sites in the main city, Abidjan. Thousands fled the sites, which included areas next to homes and a huge garbage dump. An Ivorian shipping agent, Essouin Koua Desire, was convicted of complicity in poisoning and sentenced to five years in jail.
■ ICELAND
‘Non-terrorists’ fight back
Icelanders who feel they have been branded terrorists by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown are fighting back — with a snowball, a gun made from Lego blocks and bubble gum. Brown used anti-terrorist laws to freeze the assets of Icelandic bank Landsbanki after what he said was Reykjavik’s “completely unacceptable” failure to guarantee British deposits. Icelanders were outraged, saying the decision was deeply damaging to a country that does not even have a standing army. “It is so unfair, and so ridiculous — using a terrorist law against Iceland is like using a terrorist law against the Vatican,” said photographer Thorkell Thorkelsson. “The difference is there are more weapons in the Vatican.” Thorkelsson asked people to come to his studio bearing arms to show how dangerous Iceland is. Pensioner Hulda Edelvy posed for a photograph brandishing a staple remover and a pair of pliers. Some young people started a Web site www.indefence.is, which carries photographs of Icelanders at home holding placards saying “We are not terrorists.” More than 20,000 people, or about 7 percent of the island’s population, signed up in its first 12 hours. “People can do anything claiming they are working against terrorism. We are seeing the world turn into something George Orwell wrote about in 1984,” one poster said.
■ SOUTH AFRICA
Lawmaker becomes star
A lawmaker who toppled to the ground on live television after his chair cracked, and then collapsed, has become an unwitting Internet star as a video of the incident spreads online. The chairman of parliament’s finance committee, Nhlanhla Nene, was being interviewed live on a popular morning show when his chair gave a loud crack, collapsing seconds later as he disappeared from the screen. A video clip of the incident has made its way onto the BBC News Web site as well as YouTube and the popular social networking site Facebook with titles such as “chairman cracks under pressure.”
■ UNITED STATES
Hathaway’s ex pleads guilty
Movie star Anne Hathaway’s former boyfriend was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in jail on Thursday after pleading guilty to fraud. Raffaello Follieri, 30, had been accused of cheating investors by claiming he had Vatican connections, which allowed him to buy Catholic Church property at a discount. He pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering, and had agreed to forfeit US$2.4 million. Prosecutors said he used the money he bilked from investors to fund a lifestyle suitable for the boyfriend of one of Hollywood’s biggest stars — traveling on private planes, enjoying expensive hotels and dinners and renting yachts. He also rented an exclusive Manhattan apartment for US$37,000 a month.
■ COLOMBIA
Head of intelligence resigns
The head of the intelligence agency resigned on Thursday amid allegations she had the agency spy on political opponents of President Alvaro Uribe. Maria del Pilar Hurtado presented her resignation to Uribe, to whose office the Administrative Security Agency (DAS) reports, as an “act of dignity,” she said. The director earlier fired the DAS social and political intelligence chief, Jaime Ovalle, who had signed the orders for intelligence gathering on Senator Gustavo Petro and other leaders of the leftist Alternative Democratic Pole (PDA). In Congress on Tuesday, Petro, a vocal critic of the Uribe administration, presented incriminating documents signed by Ovalle in August and last month giving orders to spy on members of Petro’s party.
■ UNITED STATES
Louisiana man sues Oprah
A Louisiana man has filed a lawsuit against TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey, claiming she and an attorney made false statements that led the FBI to arrest him on charges that he tried to extort her. Keifer Bonvillain, who had the charges dismissed, seeks damages of US$180 million from Winfrey, her attorney and the FBI in the federal lawsuit filed on Tuesday. Bonvillain, of Houma, Louisiana, was arrested in December 2006 after he allegedly recorded telephone conversations with an employee of Winfrey’s production company and told a company associate he wanted to publish a book based on the recordings.
■ UNITED STATES
‘Hit a Jew Day’
At least four students from a suburban St Louis middle school face punishment for allegedly hitting Jewish classmates during what they called “Hit a Jew Day.” The incident happened last week at Parkway West Middle School in Chesterfield. District spokesman Paul Tandy said some of the school’s approximately three dozen Jewish students were hit on the shoulders or backs. But in one case, a student was allegedly slapped in the face. It began with an unofficial “Spirit Week” among sixth-graders that started harmlessly enough with a “Hug a Friend Day.” Then there was “High Five Day.” Soon, though, the days moved from friendly to silly. Next there was “Hit a Tall Person Day” and, finally, “Hit a Jew Day.” District officials said a handful of children were directly involved. Those who actually struck classmates could face suspension and required counseling, Tandy said. Others who weren’t directly involved but taunted Jewish students or egged on classmates could face lesser penalties.
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
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
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