■UNITED KINGDOM
Birth rate highest since 1973
Women are having more children than at any time in the past 35 years, according to figures released on Thursday by the country’s Office of National Statistics (ONS). The birth rate in England and Wales, which reached a low point of 1.63 children per woman in 2001, now appears to be on a sustained upward trend. The latest ONS figures, for last year, show that it has reached 1.95 — the highest fertility level since 1973. Over the past decade the number of births to mothers aged 40 and above has nearly doubled from 13,555 in 1998 to 26,419 last year. The average age of women giving birth remained unchanged, however, at 29.3.
■IRAN
Woman, three men hanged
A woman and three men have been hanged in the southern city of Shiraz, a newspaper reported yesterday. The woman, identified only by her first name Afsaneh, was executed on Wednesday for killing her husband with the help of her lover, the Etemad newspaper said. The other convicts hanged on Wednesday were an Afghan man found guilty of raping a 50-year-old woman, a drug trafficker and a murderer, the report said. The latest hangings bring to at least 116 the number of people executed so far this year, according to a count based on news reports. Last year, the country executed 246 people. The human rights group Amnesty International has said that in 2007 the country applied the death penalty more than any other country apart from China, executing 335 people.
■SERBIA
Angry businessman detained
A judge on Friday ordered a 30-day detention for a man who threatened to blow himself up in the presidential building in downtown Belgrade a day earlier. The man was originally placed under a 48-hour detention pending an investigation, but the investigative judge later ordered the month-long detention “because of the danger that he could again commit a crime.” The bankrupted businessman allegedly entered the presidential building in downtown Belgrade on Thursday carrying two hand grenades and threatening to kill himself.
■LEBANON
Leader calls for killing spies
The leader of the Hezbollah movement, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, urged on Friday that prosecutors seek capital punishment against recently captured Israel-linked espionage ring members. In a televised address commemorating the ninth anniversary of the Israeli withdrawal from the south, Nasrallah said: “I call for capital punishment for all arrested agents and beginning with the Shiite agents first.” Authorities are holding up to 30 suspects in what was described by security sources as a “wide-scale investigation into espionage” by Israel. A woman and a 70-year-old man were arrested in the past 24 hours. At least 18 suspects have already been charged.
■GREECE
Five injured at mosque
Unknown assailants tried to burn down a makeshift mosque in Athens yesterday, injuring five Bangladeshi migrants who suffered burns and respiratory problems in the attack, police said. The attackers broke the windows of a basement flat used as a mosque early yesterday morning and threw gasoline inside before lighting it, a police source said. Four Bangladeshi men suffered respiratory problems and a fifth was burned, police said. All were initially taken to hospital but later discharged.
■UNITED STATES
Ex-astronaut may lead NASA
US President Barack Obama will name black former astronaut Charles Bolden as NASA administrator, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday. Citing three unnamed congressional sources, the newspaper said that if confirmed by the Senate, the retired Marine Corps general would be the first black American to head the agency. The announcement will be timed to the landing of the shuttle Atlantis, which remained in orbit on Friday because of bad weather but was scheduled to return to Earth yesterday or today, the report said.
■BRAZIL
Man filmed women in loo
A man accused of illicitly filming more than 2,000 women in his workplace toilet with his cellphone has been ordered by a judge to pay damages of US$14,700 in the first of six cases brought against him by victims. Frederico Freire Lemos was charged with photographing the women in compromising positions with his phone at the offices of the Brazil Union of Composers, where he was executive director. He was caught when one worker glimpsed a red light while on the toilet and discovered that it was a hidden camera phone.
■UNITED STATES
Freed reporter arrives in US
Iranian-American reporter Roxana Saberi said on Friday she was “happy to be back in the United States” after spending four months in an Iranian jail. Saberi, who left Iran one week ago and first traveled with her mother, father, brother and a family friend to Vienna, Austria, arrived on Friday at Dulles International Airport outside Washington. “I am so happy to be back in the United States,” Saberi told a friend while flanked by two police officers. “One thing that kept me alive was singing the national anthem to myself,” she told dozens of reporters. The 32-year-old US-born journalist walked free from the notorious Evin prison in Tehran on May 11 after a court reduced her prison term for spying to a two-year suspended sentence, ending a four-month ordeal.
■CANADA
Terror plotter sentenced
A young man was sentenced on Friday to two-and-a-half years in jail for participating in a major jihadist terror plot in 2006, a justice official said. The young man, who was 17 years old when he was arrested in 2006 in a police sting along with 17 other suspects in the case, was found guilty in September of “terrorist activity.” A spokesman for the Public Prosecution Service of Canada said “he was sentenced today as an adult to two-and-a-half years, but is also immediately eligible for release” as he was detained for three years while awaiting trial. He was also put on three years probation, prohibited from possessing a firearm and required to provide a DNA sample to police, the official said.
■UNITED STATES
Dad gets jail for poison
A father was sentenced to 100 years in prison for poisoning his two children to extort money from Campbell Soup Co. William Cunningham was sentenced on Thursday after a jury found him guilty of five counts of cruelty to children and two counts of aggravated assault, said Kellie Perry, a clerk at the Clayton County Superior Court in Georgia. The girl and boy, then 18 months old and three years old, were hospitalized after Cunningham fed them soup tainted with prescription drugs and lighter fluid. On one occasion, authorities said he used the prescription drugs Prozac and Amitriptyline to poison the children. Cunningham was arrested in March 2006.
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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was