■AUSTRALIA
Pigeon pants trip up man
PHOTO: AFP
A traveler was caught with two live pigeons stuffed in his pants following a trip to the Middle East, customs officials said yesterday. The 23-year-old man was searched after authorities discovered two eggs in a vitamin container in his luggage, said Richard Janeczko, national investigations manager for the Customs Service. They found the pigeons wrapped in padded envelopes and held to each of the man’s legs with a pair of tights, according to a statement released by the agency. Officials also seized seeds in his money belt and an undeclared eggplant.
■CHINA
Former bank official charged
A former vice president at China Development Bank, one of the country’s three policy banks, has been charged with taking bribes, media reported yesterday. Wang Yi (王益), who lost his job when officials detained him in June and launched an investigation, admitted to taking more than 10 million yuan (US$1.5 million) in bribes, Caijing magazine reported, citing unnamed sources. The Chinese Communist Party’s discipline department detained the 53-year-old Wang throughout the probe until his arrest late last month, Caijing reported on its Web site.
■INDIA
Extremists target valentines
Hindu extremists who recently dragged young women out of a fashionable bar as part of a morality campaign have vowed to assault couples marking Valentine’s Day, reports said yesterday. Sri Ram Sena (Lord Ram’s Army) activists stormed the “Amnesia” bar in the southern city of Mangalore late last month and assaulted female customers whom they accused of behaving obscenely. Now the group has turned its wrath on romantics who plan to celebrate Valentine’s Day on Feb. 14, saying the occasion encourages anti-Indian behavior and sexual misdemeanors.
■CAMBODIA
Pedophile’s sentence cut
An appeals court yesterday reduced the prison term of a German man convicted of sexually abusing four boys, a court official said. A court panel cut Alexander Moritz Watrin’s prison term from 10 years to seven years, Appeals Court Judge Samrith Sophal said. A provincial court had sentenced Watrin, 38, in October 2006 for molesting four boys aged seven to 15. The country has long been a magnet for foreign pedophiles, and its courts have stepped up action against sex offenders in recent years.
■INDIA
Dalai Lama out of hospital
The Dalai Lama was released from a hospital in the capital after doctors determined that minor pain in his arms was caused by a pinched nerve, his spokesman said yesterday. The 73-year-old exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, who underwent three hours of medical tests on Monday, was feeling better following a good night’s sleep in a hotel and would return immediately to his northern headquarters, spokesman Tenzin Takhla said. The Dalai Lama has had a number of health problems in recent months that have interrupted his busy schedule of international travel to teach Buddhism and highlight the Tibetan struggle for more autonomy.
■MADAGASCAR
Opposition leaders arrested
Several leaders of an anti-government movement based in Toamasina have been arrested, news reports yesterday and the country’s main opposition leader said. The Express, an independent newspaper, quoted an unidentified regional official as saying that six opposition leaders were arrested on Monday as they tried to organize a protest rally in the port city. Main opposition leader Andry Rajoelina said on his TV Viva that several people who had met with him on Sunday were arrested, but did not identify them. Rajoelina said on Monday that he was petitioning the courts to remove President Marc Ravolamanana, who he accuses of misspending public money and threatening the nation’s young democracy.
■ITALY
Comatose woman moved
Eluana Englaro, a comatose woman who has come to symbolize the right-to-die movement in the country, was transferred early yesterday to a hospital in Udine where she can die peacefully, ANSA news agency reported. The ambulance carrying Englaro, 37, left the clinic in Lecco where she had been kept in a vegetative state since a car accident that put her into the coma 17 years ago. Anti-euthanasia demonstrators tried to prevent the vehicle from leaving at about 1:30am, ANSA said. Englaro’s family had fought for 10 years to remove her from the Catholic clinic in Lecco and take her to an establishment that would remove her feeding tube. A court in Milan on Jan. 21 overruled a regional order barring area hospitals from halting her life support.
■KENYA
Journalist’s body found
The decapitated body of a journalist has been found in a forest, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said yesterday. The corpse of freelancer Francis Kainda Nyaruri, with deep gashes and hands tied behind his back, was found last Thursday, two weeks after he disappeared. Nyaruri had reported being threatened by police officers over several articles he wrote for a local weekly, RSF said.
■GREECE
Police station attacked
Unknown attackers fired shots and threw a grenade at a police station in the Athens suburb of Korydallos early yesterday, causing some damage, police said. The policeman on duty said three men fired automatic weapons at the sentry boxes and outside walls of the police station, and threw a grenade which failed to explode.
■FRANCE
Would-be thief drills too far
A hapless thief drilled his way into a bank on Saturday morning, but missed the safe and found himself in a lavatory where he was promptly arrested. A 21-year-old Belgian broke into a building next to a branch of Banque Populaire in Marseille, La Provence newspaper reported on Sunday. Alarms were triggered when he broke through the wall and police caught the man when they arrived at the bank.
■SOMALIA
Ethiopian troops return
Ethiopian troops who pulled out of the country last month after a more than two-year intervention have crossed back over the border and set up a checkpoint near a town held by Islamic militants, locals said yesterday. “We have been frightened for the last 36 hours because Ethiopian troops and the ousted Baladwayne authorities have come closer,” local elder Abdirizak Ali said from Baladwayne town, which al Shabaab insurgents have held since late last year.
■UNITED STATES
Adult videomaker arrested
Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis was arrested in Los Angeles after he showed up five hours late for a court hearing in his tax evasion case. When the adult-video entrepreneur finally appeared in court on Monday afternoon, he told the judge he was suffering from the flu. Francis’ attorney Melissa Weinberger says US marshals then handcuffed Francis and took him away. Francis is accused of claiming more than US$20 million in bogus business expenses on his corporate tax returns, including US$3.8 million for a home in Mexico and US$10.4 million in phony consulting services. He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of federal tax evasion. The hearing was to consider a request from his tax attorneys to recuse themselves.
■UNITED STATES
Mom guilty of killing baby
A mother was convicted of capital murder on Monday for the death of her two-year-old daughter, who was whipped with belts and flung onto a tile floor to teach her manners, before her body was dumped in a box in Galveston Bay, Texas. Jurors deliberated less than two hours before finding Kimberly Trenor guilty. She received an automatic sentence of life without parole. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty. Trenor and her husband, Royce Clyde Zeigler II, were accused of killing Riley Ann Sawyers while disciplining her in July 2007. Prosecutors said Trenor and Zeigler beat Riley with belts, dunked her head in cold water and threw her onto a tile floor, fracturing her skull. Zeigler’s capital murder trial will be held later. After Riley’s death, the couple stuffed her body in a plastic box and hid it at their suburban Houston home before dumping it in Galveston Bay, authorities said. Sheriff’s investigators dubbed the toddler “Baby Grace” during the weeks they worked to identify her remains, found by a fisherman.
■UNITED STATES
Man guilty of racist assault
A New York man pleaded guilty on Monday to a series of racist assaults allegedly meant to protest the election of President Barack Obama that left one victim in a coma, the Department of Justice said. Ralph Nicoletti, 18, was the last of four defendants to plead guilty in federal court to three hate crime assaults on the night of Obama’s election as the first black American president. The other codefendants are Bryan Garaventa, 18, Michael Contreras, 18, and Brian Carranza, 21. If convicted, they each face sentences of up to 10 years in prison. As part of his plea, Nicoletti agreed to a 12-year sentence subject to the court’s approval. At the plea proceeding, Nicoletti admitted that he and his co-defendants “decided to assault African-Americans in Staten Island [New York] after President Obama was declared the winner of the election on November 4.”
■UNITED STATES
Teenager charged in attacks
A New York teenager awaiting trial in the hate crime killing of an Ecuadorean immigrant has been accused of seven other attacks on Hispanics. Jeffrey Conroy is charged with murdering Marcelo Lucero. On Monday, he pleaded not guilty to a new indictment involving at least seven other assaults. Conroy and six fellow students are charged with assaulting Hispanics over 14 months in the Patchogue-Medford area of eastern Long Island. Five of the teens pleaded not guilty last week; the seventh was due in court yesterday. All previously pleaded not guilty to hate crime and other charges in the Nov. 8 stabbing.
‘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