■ AUSTRALIA
‘Bizarre’ couple jailed
A couple who imprisoned a six-year-old boy in a baby’s cot in their garage were jailed yesterday by a judge who described their behavior as cruel and bizarre. The pair kept the child in a portable cot covered with a homemade plywood lid that the boy was unable to remove. The boy was given water and fed once or twice a day. He was also given a screwdriver and saucepan to bang together when he needed to use the toilet, Perth District Court heard. When found by authorities in November last year, the child weighed only 12kg, had little muscle strength and several bruises. Reports said he had been kept in the cot for as long as two years. The court heard that the 34-year-old woman had become the boy’s foster mother soon after he was born, when his natural mother was unable to care for him.
■ PHILIPPINES
Police charge woman
Police charged a woman with murder yesterday after she admitted to killing her Australian boyfriend in a southern Philippine city, a police official said. Corazon Donato, 30, admitted to killing Philip Andrew Aitkin, 43, during a heated argument over the custody of their four-year-old son at their rented house in Davao City, 990km south of Manila, Senior Superintendent Francisco Villaroman said. Three men were also arrested and charged with murder, he said. Villaroman said investigators on Wednesday unearthed the decomposing body of Aitkin, a mechanical engineer working with a US company in Dubai, in the front yard of the couple’s house. Villaroman said Aitkin’s employers in Dubai sought the help of the police in locating the victim on Nov. 1 after he failed to contact them. He added that Aitkin might have been murdered that same day but the date of his death has yet to be verified by forensic experts.
■ JAPAN
Woman arrested for calls
Police arrested a woman for making more than 7,000 emergency telephone calls because an officer did not take her initial complaint seriously, a police spokesman said on Wednesday. The 38-year-old was arrested on Tuesday on charges of obstructing police work, a police spokesman in western Osaka said. She made 7,177 calls during the day or night between Sept. 14 and Oct. 13 this year, sometimes shouting “drop dead” at police, he said. The woman first called in 2005 to say she had been hit by a man, but the officer who answered her call “did not take the allegation seriously, because what she said was hard to understand,” he said. “She apparently had a grudge against police officials,” he said.
■ CAMBODIA
S Korean commits suicide
A South Korean man committed suicide in a hotel after gambling away his fortune in the country’s casinos, media reports said yesterday. Police found Chae Geong-seok’s body hanging in his Phnom Penh hotel room on Thursday with a suicide note explaining to his family that his fortune was gone, the Phnom Penh Post said. The man’s body was taken to the city’s Calmette Hospital to be collected by his family.
■ NEW ZEALAND
Victim drives rapist to police
A rape victim drove her rapist to a police station when he fell asleep in his car after assaulting the woman, local media reported on Wednesday. Vipul Sharma, 22, was found guilty of abduction and two charges of rape by the Auckland District Court Tuesday, officials said.
■ UNITED KINGDOM
World War I vet dies at 108
One of the five remaining British veterans of World War I has died at the age of 108 in Australia, the BBC reported on Thursday. Sydney Maurice Lucas, who was born in Leicester on Sept. 21, 1900, regularly led the annual Anzac Day parade in Melbourne, said the report. He was among the last batch of conscripts to be called up in August 1918. Lucas died on Nov. 4 near Melbourne. He emigrated to Australia in 1928, where another of the known World War I survivors, 107-year-old Claude Choules, still lives.
■ SPAIN
‘Kidnapping’ plan foiled
A Chinese man faked his own kidnapping as well as that of his 14-month-old grandson, before demanding a ransom from the toddler’s parents to fund his gambling addiction, police said on Thursday. The toddler’s father, who runs a food shop in Madrid, went to a police station in the early hours of Oct. 28 to report that his son and the child’s 53-year-old grandfather had been kidnapped, police said in a statement. The man said a woman had called another family member to demand 50,000 euros (US$65,000) for their safe return. In a second call made several hours later, the supposed kidnapper put the toddler’s grandfather, identified only as Yimei L., on the line. “He said he was being coerced by the kidnappers, who demanded the money,” the police statement said. The grandfather then made a third call to his family where he said he had escaped but urgently needed money to secure the release of his grandson who was threatened with death. Police located him shortly afterwards and took him in for questioning. The grandfather soon admitted the story was not true. His 48-year-old accomplice, Jiantuan Y., was also detained after she abandoned the baby inside a supermarket trolley. “The woman said that her companion was the brains behind the operation and the motive was to frighten the family and get money for playing slot machines,” the statement said.
■ NORWAY
Climate threatens lemmings
Lemming numbers are dwindling because of climate change, ending a cycle of population booms and busts that inspired a myth of mass suicides by the rodents, scientists said on Wednesday. Fewer lemmings in the country’s southern mountains meant predators such as the Arctic fox were forced to eat other prey including grouse and ptarmigan birds. “The lemming population is falling and the peaks are disappearing,” said Nils Stenseth of Oslo University, one of the authors of the report published in the journal Nature. Tim Coulson of Imperial College, London, wrote a commentary on the study saying that lemmings were so common in the country’s north in 1970 that “snowploughs were used to clear the vast numbers of squashed animals from roads.” But population surges quickly led to food shortages and mass migrations. “On occasion, desperate to find food, they jump into water and start swimming. This behavior led to the myth that lemmings commit suicide,” he wrote.
■ RUSSIA
Bombing death toll rises
The toll in a suspected suicide blast that ripped apart a minibus in a busy square in the city of Vladikavkaz rose to 11 early yesterday, the Interfax news agency reported. More than 40 people were injured in Thursday’s blast outside a market in the center of Vladikavkaz, located in the North Ossetia region of the restive Russian Caucasus. Witnesses said the public minibus was packed with people, most of them students, when the blast occurred at a bus stop.
■ MEXICO
Tiger lounges on patio
A family in western Mexico was in shock on Thursday after finding a tiger, which had escaped from a circus, lying on their patio, police said. The tiger terrified the town of Zitacuaro, in western Michoacan State, as it wandered the streets for an hour and a half before entering a house, a local police officer said. The tiger “went through the house and lay down on the patio,” the officer said. “The family was terrified and they hid, but these tigers are peaceful, they don’t attack,” he said. A total of three tigers escaped from their circus cages when the doors were left open on Wednesday. A trainer recovered two of them quickly, using chickens as bait, while the local pound picked up the third tiger after its excursion around town.
■ UNITED STATES
Rabid fox attacks jogger
Authorities in Arizona say a jogger attacked by a rabid fox ran 1.5km with the animal’s jaws clamped on her arm and then drove herself to a hospital. The Yavapai County sheriff’s office said the woman told deputies she was on a trail near Prescott on Monday when the fox attacked and bit her foot. She said she grabbed the fox by the neck when it went for her leg but it bit her arm. The woman wanted the animal tested for rabies so she ran to her car with the fox still biting her arm, then pried it off and tossed it in her trunk and drove to the Prescott hospital. The sheriff’s office says the fox later bit an animal control officer. He and the woman are both receiving rabies vaccinations.
■ UNITED STATES
Crew duct-tape passenger
An airline crew used duct tape to keep a passenger in her seat because they say she became unruly, fighting flight attendants and grabbing other passengers, forcing the flight to land in North Carolina. Maria Esther Castillo was due in court on Thursday, charged with resisting arrest and interfering with the operations of a flight crew aboard United Airlines Flight 645 from Puerto Rico to Chicago. Castillo, 45, struck a flight attendant on the buttocks with the back of her hand during Saturday’s flight, FBI Special Agent Peter Carricato said in a criminal complaint filed in US District Court in Charlotte. She also stood and fell onto the head of a blind passenger and later started pulling the person’s hair, the complaint stated. Ankle cuffs kept slipping off Castillo, so the flight crew and two passengers were forced to use duct tape to keep her in her seat, the complaint states. She calmed as the pilot diverted the flight to Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, but became disruptive again when authorities boarded the plane to remove her, authorities said. Carricato states that a passenger saw Castillo having drinks in an airport bar before boarding. She bought another drink on the plane. Flight attendants stopped serving her alcohol because of her behavior, the complaint states.
■ UNITED STATES
Clean up leads to blaze
Would-be cleaners take note: A blowtorch is not a good substitute for a broom. Coweta County authorities say Galen Winchell set fire to his west Georgia home Wednesday as he cleaned cobwebs from exterior eaves with a blowtorch. Winchell noticed the blaze when he saw smoke pouring from the attic. Local fire investigator James Gantt says the fire was confined to one part of the house, but the entire home had smoke and water damage. No one was hurt.
‘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