■NEW ZEALAND
Swine flu no excuse for DWI
A woman had a novel defense when she appeared in court on a charge of driving while intoxicated (DWI): It was swine flu’s fault. Business manager Deborah Karen Graham sought clemency for the charge in Queenstown on Monday, saying the three glasses of wine she had consumed were more potent because she was recovering from the virus. Judge Kevin Phillips was having none of it: “Swine flu seems to be the ‘in’ submission for everything at the moment. I reject all that.” He fined Graham US$360 and disqualified her from driving for six months. The country has been hard hit by swine flu, with 2,662 confirmed cases reported, including 14 deaths.
■HONG KONG
Murderer sentenced to life
A man who killed a teenage prostitute before cutting up her body and leaving some of the remains at a butcher’s has been sentenced to life, a judicial spokeswoman said yesterday. Transportation worker Ting Kai-tai, 24, was found guilty by a unanimous verdict at the High Court on Monday of murdering the 16-year-old, the spokeswoman said. Jailing Ting, Judge Alan Wright described the crime as “barbaric,” the English-language daily the Standard reported. “The fact we had to sit and listen to what you did was the worst experience ever imaginable,” Wright was quoted as saying. “It would be no exaggeration to say your conduct was barbaric. You killed a 16-year-old and you disposed of her body in a most horrendous way.” Ting told police following his arrest last year that he had killed Wong Ka-mui after having sex with her in his apartment in April last year. He pleaded not guilty, saying he had been under the influence of drugs and had no recollection of killing the girl.
■AUSTRALIA
Women rescued from toilet
A woman was stuck in her toilet for a week before neighbors heard her cries for help, officials said yesterday. The 67-year-old Queensland woman was found on Sunday, seven days after she became trapped, officials said. “Firefighters accessed the woman and freed her. Paramedics treated the woman and transported her to Ipswich Hospital,” they said. She was very dehydrated but conscious, officials said. Rescuers had trouble reaching the woman because she was so tightly wedged by the toilet, with a foot stuck on either side.
■AUSTRALIA
Ski jump fells octogenarian
An 80-year-old man broke his hip while attempting a 2m ski jump at Mount Buller in Victoria state on Sunday, but says life is “too short” to skip the slopes. Ambulance Victoria flight paramedic Steve Grove says the man has been a regular skier at since the 1950s. The man was airlifted off the mountain and taken to a hospital in Melbourne for treatment. Grove says when he asked him why he was still skiing at 80, the man replied simply: “Life is too short.”
■CAMBODIA
Activists slam ‘AIDS colony’
AIDS campaigners and rights groups protested yesterday over the government’s shunting of HIV sufferers into an unsanitary “AIDS colony” outside Phnom Penh. More than 100 international and domestic pressure groups told Prime Minister Hun Sen and Health Minister Mam Bunheng in a letter they were “deeply disturbed” by the government’s treatment of 40 HIV-affected families. Over the past two months the government has evicted the families from Phnom Penh to live in metal sheds without running water or adequate sanitation at Tuol Sambo, 25km from the capital, the letter said.
■SRI LANKA
Cellphones banned in school
The government has banned students from taking mobile phones to school following the suicide of a teenager disciplined for using her telephone, an education ministry spokesman said yesterday. All schools were ordered to impose the ban after a 14-year-old girl — reprimanded over telephone contact with a boy during school last week — hanged herself, the spokesman said. Another student from the same school in the capital Colombo attempted suicide after receiving a similar reprimand. “Bringing mobile phones to school will now be considered unacceptable and teachers will make sure that no students takes a phone to class,” the spokesman said. More than half the country’s 20 million population use mobile phones and several networks offer special packages aimed at students.
■FRANCE
Oxygen prevents cancer
Men who regularly do heart-pounding exercise are less likely to develop cancer, a study said yesterday. The study, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, found that the key factor in the reduced risk of cancer was a higher rate of oxygen consumption. A team of researchers from the universities of Kuopio and Oulu in Finland studied the leisure-time physical activity over a 12-month period of 2,560 men between 42 and 61 years old with no history of cancer. Over an average follow-up period of 16 years, 181 of the subjects died from cancer, mostly of the stomach or intestines, lungs, prostate and brain. Using an intensity scale for physical exercise that measured “metabolic units” of oxygen consumption, the scientists found that the men who exercised for at least 30 minutes a day were half as likely to get cancer as those who did not.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Model charged with bigamy
A former model who wed five men without divorcing any of them was handed a suspended jail sentence on Monday by a court after being charged with bigamy. Emily Horne, 30, married four men by the age of 23, changing her name on marriage certificates to avoid detection, a court in Manchester heard. Horne, a former glamour model who had roles in adult movies, only told husband No. 5 that she was already married when they set off on their honeymoon in 2007. Judge Mushtaq Khokhar described Horne as a “manipulative woman” who had “undermined the institution of marriage.” But the judge said he had decided not to jail her because she had made progress in the last six months since being prescribed medication for a personality disorder. Horne, who has bipolar disorder, was handed a 10-month suspended prison sentence after admitting to bigamy at an earlier court hearing.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Bomb prankster sentenced
A teenager who phoned the White House and claimed as part of a “drunken prank” that there was a bomb in the center of New York escaped jail on Monday. Thomas Hutchinson, 19, from Sheffield, northern England, made a “giggling” call to the White House switchboard after drinking with friends at a barbecue in May and claimed there was a bomb in Madison Square Garden. The operator pressed a malicious call trace button and it was found to have been made in Britain. Prosecutor Stephen Acaster said there was great concern when the call was first received but it was soon realized it was a hoax and Madison Square Garden was not evacuated. A court gave him a six-month jail sentence, suspended for 18 months. He was ordered to carry out 250 hours of unpaid work.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema