■ HONG KONG
Strip searches probed
Police yesterday were facing an inquiry into why they carry out 18 strip searches a day on suspects, with some claiming they are repeatedly ordered to undress. Legislators have set up a sub-committee to investigate the practice after hearing that more than one in five suspects detained between July and last month were strip-searched. Many of the suspects strip-searched are women from China and other Southeast Asian countries detained for prostitution and related offenses in the region of 6.9 million. A hearing of the legislative council’s security panel on Monday heard that of 8,086 people detained by police between July and last month, 1,674 were fully strip-searched, having to remove all their clothes.
■ PHILIPPINES
Children preyed on
Human traffickers are preying on children displaced by the Muslim insurgency in the south, an independent monitor said yesterday. The Visayan Forum Foundation, which monitors human trafficking in the country, said groups trawl evacuation camps on Mindanao looking for child laborers to be flown abroad. About 34 Filipino minors have been rescued by social workers from traffickers who smuggled them out of the conflict zones to work abroad, mostly in the Middle East, group president Cecilia Oebanda said. She said her group recently saved a group of children aged between 14 and 16 at Manila airport who were on their way to the Middle East on fake passports.
■ MALAYSIA
Group tries to save animals
Conservationists said yesterday they were planning a big push to protect Borneo’s orangutans, pygmy elephants and other endangered wildlife by purchasing land from palm oil producers to create a forest sanctuary. The deal is meant to help stave off the demise of orangutans, whose numbers have dwindled amid illegal logging and the rapid spread of palm oil plantations in the country and Indonesia, the only two countries where orangutans are found in the wild. The LEAP Conservancy group is in talks to buy 90 hectares of tropical jungle land in Sabah State on Borneo island from palm oil operators, LEAP executive director Cynthia Ong said.
■ AUSTRALIA
‘Crocodile Dundee’ is angry
Actor Paul Hogan, the outback hero of the iconic Crocodile Dundee movies, demanded an apology from officials yesterday over a five-year investigation into his tax affairs. “I’ve been shocked by the bullying tactics and the strange laws in Australia,” Hogan said of the inquiry into allegations he used offshore accounts to avoid paying tax. “They come after you and you have no right to speak to the press, but they — the enemy — they just leak to the press.” The 69-year-old actor, who was asked about the long-running investigation during a press conference to promote an upcoming film, said he wanted an apology.
■ SOUTH KOREA
Child given defector status
A five-year-old boy born in China to a North Korean woman has been granted defector status by Seoul after a two-year legal battle, officials said on Monday. The boy, identified only as Hwang, came alone in 2006 with the help of relatives and human rights activists there. Through the activists he filed a lawsuit with the Seoul Administrative Court after the unification ministry refused to provide him with financial help, saying he should not be recognized as a defector. Hwang’s mother left her husband when she fled North Korea in 1998 and went to China. She gave birth to him in 2003 while living with an ethnic Korean Chinese citizen.
■ ALBANIA
Wartime organ sales probed
The country’s top prosecutor on Monday met the Serbian war crimes prosecutor who is probing claims that guerrillas killed Serb prisoners for their organs during the 1999 Kosovo War. Vladimir Vukcevic handed the Albanian prosecutor the material the Serb side has gathered on the case so far, his spokesman Bruno Vekaric said. Kosovo and Albania have denied any knowledge of the alleged crimes. Allegations of organ-trafficking involving Serbs killed during Kosovo’s 1998 to 1999 war first surfaced in a book by the former chief UN war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte. Albanian Foreign Minister Lulzim Basha has called the allegations “inventions and absurdities.”
■ EGYPT
Women may fight back
Sunni Islam’s highest authority has approved a woman’s right to fight back if her husband uses violence against her, Al-Masry al-Youm newspaper reported on Monday. The declaration by Sheikh Abdel Hamid al-Atrash, who heads Al-Azhar University’s committee for fatwas, or religious rulings, comes after similar rulings by religious leaders in Saudi Arabia and Turkey. “A wife has the legitimate right to hit her husband in order to defend herself,” Atrash was quoted as saying. Over the last few days, Saudi Sheikh Abdel Mohsen al-Abyakan stressed the fact that a wife should resort to “the same kind of violence” as her husband used against her, whether it be with a leather strap or a wire cable, the paper said. Prominent Turkish Muslim preacher and writer Fethullah Gulen went one step further and ruled that a woman should return the violence with interest. “She should give back two blows for each one received,” the paper quoted him as saying.
■ FRANCE
Man trapped by train toilet
A man became trapped while trying to fish his mobile phone out of the toilet on a high-speed train, forcing firefighters to cut through the U-bend to free him, passengers said. The service was delayed for two hours after the 26-year-old victim, hunting for his lost telephone, fell prey to the powerful suction system which drains the toilets on board, the rail network’s regional office said.
■ AUSTRIA
Drunk driver contests charge
A man charged with drunk driving drove to a police station to complain about the charge while drunk, officials said on Monday. The 65-year-old had his driving license and car keys first taken away from him on Sunday after driving while over the alcohol limit in the northern city of Linz. He then went home, picked up his spare car keys, went back to the abandoned car and drove to police headquarters to explain why he was unhappy with the charge. The driver was charged a second time.
■ GERMANY
Wife-free trip brings trouble
A Swedish man’s novel explanation for taking a break from a troubled marriage has landed him in trouble with the German police. Nuremberg police say the man came to them on Saturday claiming to have been abducted from his home in southern Sweden by two men who demanded money and took him to the German city. That triggered a large-scale search. But police said in a statement on Monday that the 43-year-old’s story fell apart in questioning. He told officers that he had embarked on a European tour to get away from marital problems at home. He said he came up with the kidnapping story to explain his absence to his wife, who had reported him missing. Police said the man is under investigation for faking a crime.
■ UNITED STATES
Uproar over ‘Hanging Palin’
A Halloween display showing a figure resembling Republican vice presidential pick Sarah Palin hanging by a noose has caused uproar in the Californian city of West Hollywood. Chad Michael Morrisette has the effigy, wearing Palin’s trademark red jacket, glasses, high heels and a wig, hanging from the roof of his house in the city to the west of Los Angeles. “It should be seen as art and it should be seen within the month of October. It is Halloween. It’s time to be scary. It’s time to be spooky,” he told a local television channel. Mayor Jeffrey Prang issued a statement condemning the display, in which a disfigured model of presidential candidate John McCain can also be seen surrounded by flames.
■ UNITED STATES
Poodle a runway runaway
Boston’s Logan International Airport officials say a poodle escaped from her kennel as she was being unloaded after a flight from Detroit on Saturday night and scampered across runways and taxiways. Airport spokesman Phil Orlandella says “Choochy” evaded airport personnel for more than 17 hours and delayed at least eight flights. About 15 state police, firefighters, operations personnel and even electricians chased Choochy late into the night, delaying flights for up 30 minutes. Orlandella says the poodle was frightened, tired and hungry when she was finally lured to safety with food early on Sunday afternoon.
■ CANADA
Coronary victims take risks
More than one-third of heart attack victims drive themselves to hospital instead of calling for an ambulance, delaying potentially life-saving treatments, says a new study. Victims may also endanger others by getting behind the wheel of a motor vehicle when blood flow to their heart is restricted, said the study presented on Sunday to the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress. Some patients even took a bus. “They are committing a mistake with potentially grave consequences” for themselves and the public, cardiologist Madhu Natarajan told the Ottawa Citizen.
■ BELGIUM
Show cooks up controversy
A culinary show has yanked plans to feature Adolf Hitler’s “favorite meal” this week after cooking up a controversy, Flemish public television VRT said on Monday. “The management of VRT defends the content of the program but preferred to withdraw it from scheduling on account of the controversy,” the channel said in a statement. Chef Jeroen Meus was to have caught some trout in Bavaria, before heading to Hitler’s “Eagle’s Nest” hideaway in Bavaria to whip up the “meal of an atrocious man” as part of a “succulent feast,” VRT said on its Web site last week.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
Ex-SAS man turns romantic
Chris Ryan, former SAS soldier and author of 13 military thrillers with titles such as Zero Option, Ultimate Weapon and Firefight, is to publish a romantic novel under a female pseudonym, Molly Jackson. Ryan was sniper team commander of an anti-terrorist team and received the Military Medal for surviving the longest escape and evasion in the service’s history. The novel is set in a remote Scottish village and tells the story of a man searching for a father he never knew. Along the way he meets with hostility and a villager with her sights set on him. “It took me two years to get it right.” Ryan said. “I won’t be doing it again. If it taught me something, it was don’t go out of your comfort zone, so I think I’ll stick to writing about what I know.”
‘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