■JAPAN
Organ ban may be scrapped
The lower house yesterday voted to scrap a ban on child organ donations, paving the way for patients aged under 15 to receive life-saving transplants for the first time. Current law bans organ transplants by children, a situation that activists say has claimed thousands of lives and forced many families to send children on costly overseas trips for surgery. The amended bill would scrap the age limit and the need for prior consent, unless the person explicitly opposed having their organs used, but it would still require family members of the children to agree. If it is rejected in the upper chamber, a two-thirds majority in the lower house could turn it into law anyway.
■AUSTRALIA
Arsonist gets three years
An unemployed man who was offered free pizza for life to burn down the pizza parlor of a rival was sentenced to three years in jail by a Melbourne court yesterday. Frank Foschini, 35, broke into Papa John’s in July 2005, doused it with gasoline and started a fire that gutted the premises and forced it to close. The court was told Foschini received US$640 in cash and the free-pizza promise from an unnamed pizza restaurateur. The judge said he was surprised no action had been taken against Foschini’s paymaster.
■INDIA
Troops hunt for rebels
Soldiers in West Bengal state yesterday moved in to quell suspected Maoist rebels who went on a rampage against the region’s ruling communists, officials said. Adhendu Sen, the state’s home secretary, said troops and police were on their way to the restive town of Lalgarh, 130km from Calcutta. Nearly 1,800 state and central security personnel have been deployed to the state over the last few days, but villagers have blocked roads into Lalgarh to try to keep them out. Witnesses said that local men armed with rifles were guarding all entry points into the town.
■AUSTRALIA
State outraged at ruling
Queensland yesterday launched an appeal against an American man’s “manifestly inadequate” 12-month jail term for the manslaughter of his wife during a honeymoon diving trip. Bubble-wrap salesman David “Gabe” Watson was sentenced to four-and-a-half years on June 5, but under a plea bargain most of the term was suspended, a decision that caused outrage among friends and relatives of his late wife. “I have formed the view that this sentence is manifestly inadequate and the state will therefore lodge an appeal against the sentence in the Queensland Court of Appeal,” Queensland Attorney-General Cameron Dick said.
■INDONESIA
Expert warns on volcano
Lusi, the “mud volcano,” could keep spewing for the next 30 years, filling the equivalent of 50 Olympic-size swimming pools every day, a top Australian expert said yesterday. Curtin University of Technology’s Mark Tingay, who has just returned from the disaster site in East Java, said about 100,000 people remained under threat from subsidence three years after Lusi first erupted. “In effect, the whole region around the vent hole is sinking by about 2 to 5 centimeters each day due to the rising mud level, causing more damage to suburban villages and triggering frequent bursts of flammable gas around homes,” he said. The volcano has buried 12 villages, killed 13 people, displaced more than 42,000 residents and wiped out 800 hectares of densely populated farming and industrial land.
■SOMALIA
Heavy fighting kills 17
Witnesses say heavy fighting overnight between government forces and Islamic insurgents killed at least 17 civilians in the Somali capital. Mohamud Daban Turyare said insurgents and government soldiers pounded each other with mortar rounds in northern Mogadishu. The ensuing heavy shelling killed at least 12 people as they emerged from Wednesday evening prayers at a mosque, Turyare said. Elsewhere, in southern Mogadishu the insurgents briefly attacked government soldiers and, in response, soldiers shelled a market killing at least five people.
■DR CONGO
Officers killed by rebels
Two army officers were killed in an attack by Rwandan Hutu rebels in the restive eastern part of the country, a military commander said on Wednesday. The major and captain were killed on Monday while traveling in their vehicle after coming under attack by Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda rebels, said the army commander for the Nord Kivu region, Colonel Bobo Kakudji. Three other soldiers were wounded in the attack by the rebels, who took over during the night a road near Rutshuru on the border with Uganda, and the rebels were killed by guards traveling in other vehicles, Kakudji said.
■EGYPT
More swine flu cases
Libya remains free from swine flu but more cases have been confirmed across the Middle East, an official at the National Center for Control and Prevention of Endemic Diseases said on Wednesday. Egyptian health authorities announced that the number of confirmed cases had risen to 29. Health Ministry spokesman Abdel Rahman Shaheen said 12 people had recovered, while 17 others were still being treated in hospital. In Oman, the Health Ministry confirmed the country’s first three cases of swine flu — students studying in the US who had recently returned home. Saudi Arabia said its total of swine flu infections climbed to 22, after five new cases were confirmed on Wednesday — three nurses from the Philippines and two boys, aged two and nine years, the Health Ministry said. Jordanian health authorities announced four new swine flu cases, while Yemen identified four confirmed cases in students who had returned from an exchange program in the US.
■FRANCE
Scientology in the dock
A court will hand down a decision in October on whether to shut down the Church of Scientology in France and convict its leaders for organized fraud, a judge said on Wednesday. Prosecutors asked the court to order the church’s Celebrity Center in Paris and a bookshop to be dismantled and called for suspended jail sentences for the leader and five others members on trial. The decision will be handed down on Oct. 27.
■AUSTRALIA
Graffiti artists jailed
Six graffiti artists caught defacing trains in London had been on a global graffiti spree that had taken them to Japan, Germany, Spain and Italy, news reports said yesterday. The Sydney men, known as the AMF Crew, were jailed for vandalism, Australia’s Daily Telegraph reported from London. British authorities said they had recorded their crimes in more than 1,000 photos. “It became clear that these men were part of a highly organized international gang linked to acts of vandalism worldwide,” British Transport Police Chief Superintendent Mark Newtown
■HAITI
Students attack UN vehicle
Student demonstrators attacked and burned a UN police vehicle in Port-au-Prince on Wednesday, adding to security concerns ahead of this weekend’s scheduled Senate elections. The student protests, now in their fourth week, are part of a general uptick in violence leading into Sunday’s scheduled second-round elections for 11 vacant Senate seats. Two UN police officers were driving past the state university medical school when students bombarded it with rocks and forced it to halt, said UN police spokesman Fred Blaise. The officers escaped unharmed and the demonstrators burned the vehicle down to its metal husk. Peacekeepers from India and Jordan arrived and formed a perimeter around the SUV. Students threw rocks at the soldiers from inside the campus and peacekeepers responded with rounds of tear gas.
■BOLIVIA
Morales cousin murdered
Rufina Morales, a first cousin of Bolivian President Evo Morales, was murdered and mutilated in the central city of Cochabamba, police said on Wednesday. The woman, 73, who had gone missing last week, was found dead by locals on Tuesday in a ravine. Police were working on the hypothesis that she had been attacked by robbers who then threw her body in the ravine, then dismembered by stray dogs. Only her head and her pelvis were found intact, while her heart and other internal organs were missing “The woman’s body was devoured by street dogs that wander around the area where she was found,” Bolivian media quoted Cochabamba police as saying. Rufina Morales had been reported missing on June 8, after she left her home to get a subsidy that the Bolivian state grants to people above 60 years of age.
■UNITED STATES
Clinton fractures elbow
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton fractured her right elbow during a fall on Wednesday, her chief of staff said. Clinton was on her way to the White House when she fell and injured her elbow, chief of staff Cheryl Mills said in a statement released late on Wednesday. Clinton was treated at The George Washington University Hospital, just a few blocks from State Department headquarters, before going home. She will undergo surgery to repair her elbow in the coming week, Mills said.
■MEXICO
Baby stolen from hospital
Authorities are searching for a newborn baby girl stolen from a crib in a government-run hospital in Mexico City. The Health Department says investigators are reviewing surveillance videos to try to identify the person who stole the day-old, 2.4kg baby. Authorities briefly closed entrances and exits to the hospital after the theft was discovered on Wednesday in a bid to prevent the suspect from escaping. The baby was lying in a crib next to her mother, who gave birth on Tuesday.
■MEXICO
Sharks contain cocaine
Authorities have found nearly a tonne of cocaine hidden inside frozen shark carcasses. Prosecutors says hundreds of packages stuffed in the bellies of dozens of dead sharks seized in the Gulf port of Progreso contained 893kg of cocaine. The Attorney General’s Office says the sharks were found in two containers on Tuesday. The containers had been shipped from Costa Rica. The 870 packages were found wrapped in plastic and inserted in the sharks.
‘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
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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in