■INDONESIA
Zoo orangutans mistreated
Zoos are mistreating endangered orangutans, forcing the great apes to live in cages and depriving them of adequate water and food, a conservation group said on Wednesday. The Center for Orangutan Protection (COP) said its study showed that most zoos in five major Indonesian cities locked up orangutans in cages instead of keeping them in more spacious enclosures. Many of the orangutans observed showed symptoms of mental stress.
■THAILAND
Panda cub born
A panda on loan from China gave birth to a healthy cub on Wednesday at Chiang Mai Zoo, officials said. “Today Lin Hui delivered a cub at 10:10am,” Chiang Mai Zoo director Thanaphat Pongphamon said in a telephone interview. The panda mother refused to allow zoo officials near the baby, Thanaphat said. To encourage conception, frustrated zoo officials resorted to showing “panda porn” videos to the bear pair in an effort to stir their passions. Finally, the team resorted to artificial insemination.
■INDIA
Ancient leprosy case found
Leprosy is one of mankind’s most ancient scourges, mentioned in writing from ancient India to the Bible to the Middle Ages. Now researchers have uncovered what they say is the oldest case of the disease yet found. Analysis of a 4,000-year-old skeleton from India shows traces of leprosy, researchers reported in Wednesday’s edition of PLoS One, a publication of the Public Library of Science. The skeleton was buried in about 2000BC at the site of Balathal, a large settlement in what is now Rajasthan.
■JAPAN
Secret novel hits shelves
Everything is secret, except the author and title. But the first novel in five years by Haruki Murakami has become a hit even before its arrival in stores today. “It is amazing. People are craving his latest novel,” said Takashi Machii, spokesman for the book’s publisher Shinchosha, which has raised its first printing to 480,000 copies, up from 380,000 after orders flooded in. Murakami, 60, is one of the most widely translated Japanese writers alive, with global best-sellers such as Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. He is considered a top Japanese candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature. In a clever marketing scheme, the contents of his new novel have been kept secret. Fans ordering the book know nothing but the title, 1Q84, which can be read as 1984 in Japanese. Murakami, who has lived in the US, including stints at Princeton and Harvard, is fiercely private. He was not available for comment.
■JAPAN
Roos appointed ambassador
Tokyo on Thursday welcomed US President Barack Obama’s appointment of John Roos as the new ambassador to Japan, saying the move showed the continuing strong alliance between the two nations. Roos, who served as the Northern California finance chair for Obama’s presidential campaign, is chief executive officer of a law firm in Palo Alto, California.
■JAPAN
Ladies go for samurai briefs
Sexy samurai underwear are the latest trendy present Japanese women want to buy for their partners, the news agency Kyodo reported. The underwear are designed to look like the armor used by samurai warriors in the Middle Ages and are selling faster than companies like Rogin Inc can supply them — despite a price tag of almost US$100.
■SERBIA
Priest fired for attacks
The Serbian Orthodox Church has dismissed a priest running a treatment center for drug addicts after videos showed patients being kicked and punched. Bishop Artemije said he ordered an inquiry into the activities of priest Branislav Peranovic at the Crna Reka center, about 300km southwest of Belgrade. “We will shut down the facility if the reports about beatings and violence persist,” Artemije said. “We are also asking state authorities to investigate the matter and punish those responsible.” Two videos made public by Belgrade’s Vreme weekly and B92 TV showed a center employee and Peranovic repeatedly beating patients with a shovel, and kicking and hitting them inside a room decorated with icons. Peranovic told B92 TV the beatings were a “hard and unwanted, but necessary part of treatment.”
■UNITED STATES
Financiers sanctioned
Washington imposed sanctions on two alleged financial backers of the Islamist group Hezbollah on Wednesday. The Treasury Department said it had designated Kassim Tajideen and Abd Al Menhem Qubaysi, who are both based in Africa, under a law that freezes the assets of alleged terrorists and their backers and prohibits Americans from having any transactions with them. Tajideen was “an important financial contributor to Hezbollah who operates a network of businesses in Lebanon and Africa,” the department said in a statement. Qubaysi is a personal representative of Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah and has hosted senior Hezbollah officials traveling to Africa to raise money, the statement said.
■UNITED STATES
Man jailed for sex tourism
A federal judge in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has sentenced a wealthy businessman to 25 years in prison on charges he traveled to eastern Europe to molest minors in exchange for money and gifts. Forty-five-year-old Anthony Mark Bianchi of North Wildwood, New Jersey, was sentenced on Wednesday after being convicted of having sex with or attempting to have sex with at least a half-dozen boys in Moldova on trips from 2003 to 2005. Several boys were brought from their isolated village in Moldova to testify against Bianchi during the three-week trial.
■SOUTH AFRICA
Facebook posting costs job
A 23-year-old clerk has been fired for calling his boss a “serial masturbator” on his Facebook page, the Durban Times reported on Wednesday. The disparaging comment by the clerk was carried back to his boss at the clothing factory near Durban by a coworker, the paper said. The firing comes as part of a clampdown on workers’ bad-mouthing their companies or colleagues on the Web site. The paper also reported that a 25-year-old Johannesburg woman had been suspended for displaying a competitor’s product on her Facebook page, while a man in Pretoria was suspended for complaining to his Facebook friends about his boss’ alleged laziness.
■FRANCE
Marceau auction held
The battered top hat of legendary mime Marcel Marceau, his signature white sailor suit and other belongings fetched nearly 500,000 euros (US$700,000) at a two-day auction in Paris. Marceau’s daughter, Camille, organized the auction to settle her late father’s outstanding debts. Marceau died in 2007 at age 84. His top hat and its single red flower went for 3,201 euros, while his sailor suit fetched 5,700 euros.
■CUBA
Sex change ban to be lifted
Havana will reinstate sex-change operations previously banned on the island, President Raul Castro’s daughter Mariela said on Wednesday. The Health Ministry authorized the operations last year, but none has been performed since. It was unclear when the surgeries would begin. Mariela Castro, a sexologist and gay-rights advocate, announced the return of sex-change procedures in comments aired on state TV. She runs the Center for Sex Education, which prepares transsexuals for sex-change operations and has identified 19 transsexuals it deems ready to undergo the procedure. Castro also said she backed efforts to allow lesbians to be artificially inseminated, a procedure currently barred.
■MEXICO
Son uses dad to get girls
Australian actor Hugh Jackman’s nine-year-old son is using his dad’s Wolverine pedigree to woo the girls. Jackman says his son Oscar, spotting a group of teenage girls one day, turned to him and said: “Hey dad, 2 o’clock, hot chicks.” Jackman, chosen People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” for last year, says the conversation made him squirm. But Jackman says his son marched right up to the girls and declared “Hey, you know that my dad’s Wolverine?” Jackman spoke to reporters on Tuesday while in Mexico City to promote X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
■UNITED STATES
Police hunt Miami cat killer
Miami police are calling on locals to help solve 20 brutal cat slayings terrorizing pet owners in the city, a spokeswoman said on Wednesday. More than 20 cats have been found quartered or mutilated in the last two weeks, prompting Miami-Dade police to call for help. “It is occurring on an almost daily basis,” spokeswoman Rebeca Perez said. “We need people to tell us if they see anything suspicious to do with this individual.”
■MEXICO
Five rescued after 19 days
The military rescued five Ecuadorian fishermen whose boat had been drifting for 19 days in the Pacific, the army said late on Tuesday. “The Ecuadorians were launching signals from their craft, asking for help from a US Coast Guard plane that contacted” the authorities, the army said in a statement, without indicating the exact date of the rescue. The fishing boat, about 20m long, was spotted 83km off the coast of the southeastern state of Chiapas, close to the border with Guatemala. The captain, a cook, a machinist and two crewmembers said they rigged their boat out on May 6 from the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica before their motor broke down and they began drifting several days later.
■UNITED STATES
LA approves couple’s pets
A Southern California couple will not be allowed to have 15 goats. They’ll have to settle for 10 goats, two horses, a llama and an emu. Roberto Alguero and Iris Fiorito live in an unincorporated area near Claremont zoned for light agricultural use. They had originally asked for a permit to keep 15 goats, but Los Angeles County’s planning commission granted them a permit allowing 10, along with the rest of their menagerie. Neighbors filed objections complaining of the noise and stench at the farm-like house, but the Board of Supervisors ruled on Tuesday that the couple could keep the animals, provided they build a 1.8m wall and keep male and female goats separate. Fiorito concedes that “we know we have a few more goats than we should.”
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in 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
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