■THAILAND
Headless corpse identified
Police on Wednesday identified a head found hanging from a Bangkok bridge and a headless body discovered floating in the river below as an Italian man — Maurizio Tosadori, 52, from Verona — who they said had killed himself. The body parts were discovered separately on Saturday and Sunday, prompting a media frenzy over the identity of the foreigner and the circumstances of his death, which police at the time said could be murder. A police spokesman said the man almost certainly hanged himself by jumping off the Rama VIII bridge, with the force of the fall ripping the head from the body.
■MALAYSIA
Sex tape rocks party
A videotape showing a top ethnic Chinese politician engaging in illegal sex acts has resurfaced, causing a rift in his party that could rock the ruling coalition, already weakened by electoral losses. A split in the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) party, the second biggest component of the ruling National Front coalition, bodes ill for the government whose popularity has plummeted in recent months. The fighting is between MCA President Ong Tee Keat and his deputy and rival, Chua Soi Lek, who has acknowledged being the person in the videotape that first surfaced in 2007 showing him having sex with a woman other than his wife. On Monday, police questioned Chua for allegedly engaging in oral sex — or “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” — which is illegal in Malaysia.
■CHINA
Immolation bid injures two
Two of three people who set themselves on fire in Beijing suffered serious, but non-life-threatening injuries, state media reported yesterday, revealing that one was a woman. The report by Xinhua news agency gave no other information on the identities or motive of the trio in Wednesday’s incident, beyond a police statement that they came to Beijing to petition over an unspecified personal grievance. It gave no information on the third person, whom the China Daily said was believed taken into custody. Xinhua had originally said they were all men.
■UNITED NATIONS
Anti-drug efforts fail: official
The global anti-drug effort is failing to effectively combat the emergence of a criminal market of “staggering proportions,” a UN official said yesterday. Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UN Office of Drugs and Crime, speaking to officials marking a century of international efforts to curb trafficking in opium and other narcotics, said: “We must have the courage to look at the dramatic, unintended consequences of drug control: the emergence of a criminal market of staggering proportions.” Countries have so far failed to implement anti-crime measures in a way that has had an impact, he said.
■JAPAN
Teens addicted to phones
Cellphones are taking center stage in the lives of Japanese teenagers, who often send or receive dozens of e-mails a day while eating, attending class or even taking a bath, a survey said. Around 46 percent of middle school students and 96 percent of high school students carry a mobile telephone, the research shows. One in four school children aged 11 to 12 has one. One in five middle school students sends or receives 50 or more e-mails on his or her phone each day, according to the education ministry survey of more than 10,000 children. Of these, 7 percent said they sent e-mail more than 100 times a day.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Labour peer jailed
Labour’s Lord Ahmed was jailed for 12 weeks on Wednesday for dangerous driving after he admitted sending text messages before a fatal crash on the M1 motorway. Sheffield Crown Court heard that Ahmed, a prominent Muslim peer, had sent and received five messages while driving at 96kph along the motorway near Rotherham in South Yorkshire on Christmas Day in 2007. Shortly afterwards, his Jaguar was involved in a collision with an Audi driven by Slovakian Martyn Gombar, 28. The court heard that the peer had finished the text message exchange before the accident and that he was not to blame for the crash in which Gombar was killed. Gombar had been drinking and had crashed minutes earlier into the central reservation, leaving his car facing the wrong way across the two outer lanes of the motorway in total darkness, the court was told. Ahmed had pleaded guilty to dangerous driving at an earlier hearing.
■MADAGASCAR
Talks to end turmoil stopped
The main opposition party and church mediators both announced on Wednesday that they were pulling out of talks to end political turmoil that has killed more than 100 people in recent weeks. Opposition leader Andry Rajoelina accused President Marc Ravalomanana of bad faith after he missed a scheduled meeting. Rajoelina said he no longer wanted to take part in negotiations with political leaders who “only wanted to play with the lives of the people.” Church leaders said they would no longer mediate the talks because negotiations were blocked.
■RUSSIA
Oil tycoon wins rare victory
Jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky won a rare victory on Wednesday when a Moscow court threw out a lawsuit alleging that he had sexually assaulted a former cellmate in prison. A judge at Meshchansky district court dismissed the suit by Alexander Kuchma, who slashed Khodorkovsky’s face while both men were imprisoned in the remote far-eastern region of Chita, a court spokeswoman said. Earlier the Interfax news agency reported that the judge had decided “to entirely reject the suit,” in which Kuchma demanded 500,000 rubles (US$13,700) in compensation for the alleged sexual assault.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Fraudsters target minister
Justice Secretary Jack Straw was targeted by Internet fraudsters who sent e-mails to his contacts claiming he was in need of emergency money while on a foreign trip, a report on Wednesday said. Straw told his local constituency’s newspaper, the Lancashire Telegraph in northern England, that the scammers had e-mailed ministry officials, ruling Labour Party members and constituents asking for US$3,000 because he had lost his wallet while in the Nigerian capital of Lagos. The fake e-mail, issued under the heading The Right Hon Jack Straw MP, claimed that Straw, a former home secretary and foreign secretary, was visiting Lagos for a project called Empowering Youth to Fight Racism, though he was in fact at home.
■MOROCCO
Iran envoy recalled
Rabat has recalled its envoy to Iran, the news agency MAP said on Wednesday, after an Iranian official questioned Bahrain’s sovereignty, provoking an outcry in much of the Sunni Muslim word. Media reports said Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, an adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said earlier this month that Iran had sovereignty over the kingdom.
■UNITED STATES
Celebrated sci-fi writer dies
Philip Jose Farmer, one of the most celebrated science fiction writers of the 1960s and 1970s, has died. He was 91. Farmer died on Wednesday in his sleep, his official Web site said. He wrote more than 75 novels, including the Riverworld and World of Tiers series. He won the Hugo Award three times and the Grand Master Award for Science Fiction in 2001. Farmer’s first published story, The Lovers, caught the attention of the science fiction world in 1952 with one of the genre’s first serious treatments of sexuality. The story inspired some of the greatest science fiction writers, including Robert Heinlein, whose classic Stranger in a Strange Land was dedicated to Farmer.
■UNITED STATES
Mystery object pierces roof
Police say an unidentified object dropped out of the sky with enough velocity to tear a hole through the roof and the second floor of a Dallas home. Senior Corporal Kevin Janse said on Wednesday the 2.7kg piece of metal with two drill holes in it fell on Tuesday evening when the person who reported the incident wasn’t home. Janse said there were no injuries. Officers couldn’t determine the source of the debris.
■UNITED STATES
Old bill foils safe-robbers
Authorities said an antique US$1,000 bill proved the downfall of three teenagers on the run in Michigan. The Kalamazoo County sheriff’s department said the trio stole a safe containing antique money from one of the youth’s parents. The Kalamazoo Gazette and the Birmingham News said they drove a stolen van to Birmingham, Alabama, where an 18-year-old tried to exchange the US$1,000 bill yesterday at a Service First Bank branch. The US Treasury stopped printing US$1,000 bills in 1945, so the bank called police. Officers arrested the teen and two 15-year-old companions. They remained in custody on Tuesday in Birmingham awaiting return to Michigan.
■UNITED STATES
Man has no claim on kidney
A court has rejected a surgeon’s claim that he should get US$1.5 million in his divorce settlement because he donated a kidney to his wife. Richard Batista held a news conference last month, saying he was entitled to the kidney compensation because Dawnell Batista was denying him visits with their three children. In a 10-page ruling, matrimonial referee Jeffrey Grob said Batista’s claim was without merit. The court ruled the kidney, donated in 2001, was a gift. Grob said a wide range of items were considered marital property — but donated organs would not be among them.
■MEXICO
Dog deaths cause outrage
The brutal deaths of more than two dozen dogs and cats kept for years in a cramped, feces-stained apartment have sparked outrage in the capital, where authorities and animal activists traded accusations on Wednesday over who was to blame. Both sides say assailants believed to be neighbors outraged by the smell and noise rammed down the door to the residence, but they disagree on how the animals died. “Masked men ... opened the door to my apartment and killed my dogs,” said Javier Cervantes, who kept 50 rescued dogs and 20 cats at the housing complex in the lower-middle-class community of Jaltenco, outside Mexico City. Cervantes, who was not home at the time, said sympathetic neighbors told him the assailants used “machetes and steel pipes” to hack and bludgeon the animals to death.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the