■VIETNAM
Bird flu kills man
A 32-year-old man has died of bird flu, becoming the second fatality from the virus in the country so far this year, a medical official said yesterday. “The patient, 32, died on Feb. 25,” said Nguyen Van Thai, head of the intensive care unit at Hanoi’s tropical diseases institute. He had tested positive for the H5N1 strain of the virus earlier this month, said a female doctor at the hospital who did not want to be named. She said he fell sick on Feb. 3 and was moved to the hospital two days later with a high fever and respiratory problems.
■CAMBODIA
Lawyer skips UN court
A UN-backed war crimes court yesterday delayed the Khmer Rouge head of state’s appeal for release from jail after his famed lawyer Jacques Verges failed to appear at proceedings. Khieu Samphan stood in court and said Verges had not traveled from Paris to attend his appeal ahead of the trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. “In order to make sure that the pre-trial chamber hears my comments fully according to the law, I would like to request that the pre-trial chamber adjourn this meeting to a later date,” Khieu Samphan said. Frenchman Verges, who has acted for some of the world’s most infamous figures including Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and Venezuelan terrorist “Carlos the Jackal,” is known for attempting to sow confusion in the courtroom. After a short recess, Judge Prak Kimsan said the appeal would be adjourned until April 3, adding that it was in Khieu Samphan’s interest to deal with the matter as soon as possible. During proceedings, co-defense lawyer Sa Sovan called the situation “unexpected” and said a relative of Verges had an emergency operation. But after the hearing he told reporters it was an important colleague in hospital.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Ryanair mulls toilet fee
Irish carrier Ryanair might start charging passengers for using the toilet while flying, chief executive Michael O’Leary said yesterday. “One thing we have looked at in the past and are looking at again is the possibility of maybe putting a coin slot on the toilet door so that people might actually have to spend a pound [US$1.43] to spend a penny in future,” he told BBC television. He said this would not inconvenience passengers traveling without cash: “I don’t think there is anybody in history that has got on board a Ryanair aircraft with less than a pound … We’re all about finding ways of raising discretionary revenue so we can keep lowering the cost of air travel.”
■ESTONIA
Patriots’ terms suspended
Three young men were given suspended prison sentences in Thursday after they admitted desecrating what they took to be a communist monument in a cemetery in Voru last December. The three took offense at the presence of the monument and painted it the blue, white and black colors of the national flag. However, the monument was actually dedicated to the victims of fascism. “The suspects regretted their offense. They said they committed the offense in a state of extreme alcoholic intoxication,” said Meelis Sarapuu of the Voru prosecutor’s office. The trio will also have to pay the cost of cleaning the monument.
■ISRAEL
Teen, 14, gets divorce
Rabbis have ruled that joking teens are legally married, forcing a girl to become a divorcee at the age of 14. It all began as a joke in a schoolyard, where a 17-year-old boy declared the girl his wife, reciting a Jewish ritual vow in front of witnesses, and she accepted his ring. The couple’s “mock wedding” was proclaimed valid because the two had a physical relationship and were therefore considered married by Jewish law. After the boy’s parents protested, the Jerusalem Regional Rabbinical Court ordered the boy to divorce her.
■GREECE
Guard sentenced for escape
A prison guard was given a three-year suspended sentence for assisting Vassilis Palaiokostas to escape by helicopter for the second time in three years, court officials said on Thursday. Sunday’s Hollywood-style getaway of Palaiokostas and his Albanian accomplice Alket Rijai was a major embarrassment to the government. The guard was convicted for allowing the pair to meet in the prison courtyard from where they escaped. He has been suspended.
■GERMANY
Cashier’s firing protested
A Berlin cashier who was sacked from a supermarket after 31 years of service because her employer accused her of stealing 1.30 euros (US$1.65) has become a flash point in a debate about unchecked capitalism. Leaders of the country’s major political parties criticized the supermarket’s decision to fire Barbara Emme, especially because the 50-year-old denies the charges that she kept bottle deposit receipts worth 1.30 euros.
■HONG KONG
Chan angry with Christie’s
Film star Jackie Chan (成龍) slammed Christie’s for its sale in Paris of two Chinese imperial bronzes that Beijing says were stolen and called for the return of the artifacts taken nearly 150 years ago. “It has broken the hearts of the 1.3 billion people of China. All these national treasures should be returned to their home countries,” Chan was quoted as saying in the South China Morning Post.
■UNITED STATES
Octopus causes flood
An octopus pulled open a valve in its tank at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium and flooded the facility with hundreds of liters of sea water. Staff arrived at work Tuesday morning to find their offices soaked. They quickly traced the problem to the aquarium’s resident two-spotted octopus, a tiny female known for being curious and gregarious with visitors. The octopus apparently tugged on a valve and that allowed water to overflow its tank. Aquarium spokeswoman Randi Parent said no sea life was harmed by the flood, but the new, ecologically designed floors might be damaged by the water.
■UNITED STATES
Beach town ends wood row
A two-year battle over a New Jersey beach town’s plan to buy boardwalk wood from the Amazon rain forest is ending. Ocean City voted on Thursday night to settle a lawsuit with a Baltimore lumber company that was to sell it nearly US$1.2 million worth of Brazilian ipe wood. The plan to use the tropical hardwood to fix the boardwalk drew the ire of environmentalists, prompting the city to cancel the order. That sparked a court fight between the city and the lumber supplier. Under the settlement, the city will pay the company nearly US$1 million. The company will ship about one quarter of the wood originally ordered. The rest of the boardwalk would be completed with less durable domestic pine, considered friendlier to the environment.
■UNITED STATES
Launderer found guilty
A federal jury in Florida found a Brazilian guilty of conspiring to launder US$13.5 million from a fraudulent telemarketing scheme in his home country, the Justice Department said on Thursday. Rodrigo Molina, 32, was convicted Wednesday after a seven-day trial and could be sentenced to up to 50 years in prison, the department said in a statement. He was arrested along with fellow Brazilian Marcos Neto Macchione in Florida in a police operation that also netted 18 suspects in Brazil, including the alleged fraud boss Doron Mukamal. Molina and Macchione were found guilty of laundering the proceeds of a telemarketing scheme in which gang members posing as securities brokers convinced investors to part with taxes, escrow payments or other service fees for stock purchases.
■UNITED STATES
Magnets to tame crocodiles
Florida wildlife managers have launched an experiment to see if they can keep crocodiles from returning to residential neighborhoods by temporarily taping magnets to their heads to disrupt their “homing” ability. Researchers at Mexico’s Crocodile Museum in Chiapas reported in a biology newsletter they had some success with the method, using it to permanently relocate 20 of the reptiles since 2004.
■UNITED STATES
Scientists build snowflake
The random, symmetrical beauty of snowflakes has been recreated in a computer program, US researchers said on Tuesday. It took four years for two mathematicians from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of California, Davis, to develop the computer model’s theory and perform the computations.
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
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