■KOREAS
Hyundai pays for detention
North Korea presented South Korea with a hotel bill for US$16,000 after detaining and interrogating one of its citizens in an inn for 137 days, an official said yesterday. Hyundai paid the bill for its employee when he was released this month from detention in the North’s border city of Kaesong, a company spokesman said. Yu Seong-jin, a 44-year-old engineer, returned home on Aug. 13 after being detained for insulting the North’s political system and for urging a local worker at the Kaesong joint industrial estate to defect. Yu was not beaten or tortured and was given adequate food and sleep, the South’s unification ministry said in a report on Tuesday. But he underwent day-long interrogations every day for three months, was verbally threatened and forced sometimes to kneel on the floor, it said.
■INDONESIA
Bomb suspect arrested
Police said yesterday they had arrested a second man suspected of helping to finance twin suicide bombings on hotels in Jakarta last month. The suspect, Muhamad Jibril Abdurahman, was caught by counterterror squad officers on Tuesday in the Pamulang area, west of Jakarta, police spokesman Nanan Soekarna said. Muhamad Jibril was linked to the network that carried out the attacks on the JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels that killed nine people, police said. He was a suspected accomplice of detained Saudi national Al Khalil Ali, who was arrested earlier this month on suspicion of channeling funds from abroad to pay for the attacks.
■SRI LANKA
Execution video fake: army
The military yesterday rejected a video clip broadcast in the UK allegedly showing its troops executing prisoners during the final stages of its battle against Tamil Tiger rebels. Army spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara said the footage aired by Channel 4 in Britain was a fabrication to discredit security forces who defeated Tamil separatists in May. “This [video] was said to have been filmed at a time when the Tigers too were operating dressed in [Sri Lankan] military uniforms,” Nanayakkara said. The disturbing footage shows a man dressed in army uniform shooting a naked, bound and blindfolded man in the back of the head, while the bodies of eight others can be seen nearby in a muddy field. A 10th man was also shot in the same way toward the end of the video with men in the background gloating over the killings. In its report, Channel 4 stressed it could not verify the authenticity of the video which it received from a group called Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka. The group claims the video footage was taken in January by a soldier using a mobile phone.
■HONG KONG
Toxic face cream found
The Department of Health yesterday urged women not to use a face cream after laboratory tests showed it contained 43,266 times the acceptable level of mercury. The department issued the warning after a 58-year-old woman was admitted to hospital with mercury poisoning after using the cream. The woman fell sick early last month with headaches, dizziness, tremors and a tingling sensation on her feet after using the cream twice a day for a month. Officials are now investigating the source of the cream which has only a Chinese name. Mercury has long been used as a whitening agent in cosmetic creams, especially in Asia where pale skin is seen as a sign of beauty and nobility.
■NORWAY
Canadian wins Holberg
Ian Hacking, a Canadian philosopher, was named the winner of the 2009 Holberg International Memorial Prize on Tuesday. The winner is selected by a committee at the University of Bergen, western Norway. Hacking was cited as a “preeminent philosopher and historian of the sciences.” A prolific writer, Hacking studied the use of probability theory in science and daily life in the 1975 work, The Emergence of Probability. The award is worth 4.5 million kroner (US$670,000). The Holberg Prize was created in 2003 in memory of 18th century Danish-Norwegian author and playwright Ludvig Holberg and aims at raising awareness of the academic fields of the arts and humanities, social sciences, law and theology.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Dylan may be SatNav voice
Bob Dylan is considering lending his voice to a SatNav system, raising the prospect of having the music legend growlingly tell you: “You have reached your destination,” spiritually or otherwise. The veteran singer — whose hits include Highway 61 Revisited and On the Road Again — would become the latest celebrity to license their voice to give motorists directions on their vehicle’s satellite navigation systems. The singer shared the news on his late-night radio show, Theme Time Radio Hour, broadcast on BBC radio. Dylan joked about what he might tell unwitting drivers. “Left at the next street. No, right. You know what? Just go straight,” he quipped. Other stars whose voices have been licensed to GPS systems include Monty Python legend John Cleese and Mr T from The A-Team.
■GERMANY
Lego tail repeatedly stolen
Visitors to a tourist attraction in Berlin have been making off with an unusual memento — the 30cm long tail of a Lego giraffe. The Lego tail belongs to a 6m-tall model that has stood outside the entrance to the Legoland Discovery Center on Potsdamer Platz since 2007. “It’s a popular souvenir,” a spokeswoman for the center said on Tuesday. “It’s been stolen four times now.” The tail is made out of 15,000 Lego bricks. It takes model workers about one week to restore it at a cost of 3,000 euros (US$4,300), the spokeswoman said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Blunder allows porn for kids
Retailers who sell children violent or pornographic videos will be immune from prosecution for the next three months after the discovery of a government blunder 25 years ago. Britain should have notified the European Commission of the existence of the Video Recordings Act 1984 (VRA) — which regulated the industry — but failed to do so. “Unfortunately, the discovery of this omission means that, a quarter of a century later, the VRA is no longer enforceable,” said Barbara Follett, Minister for Culture and Tourism. She said a new act can take legal effect in three months, the period required for consultation with other EU member states. In the interim, people will be able to sell pornographic and violent videos to children under the age of 18 without fear of prosecution.
■ZIMBABWE
Officials dismiss report
Officials yesterday dismissed a South African report that President Robert Mugabe was ill. The Times newspaper reported that Mugabe, 85, was taken to a Dubai hospital after falling ill. “The president is not sick but was away on holiday. He returned home yesterday, and those reports are a load of rubbish that we get from sick and evil minds,” an official said.
■CANADA
Election talk heats up
One of the opposition parties said on Tuesday it would not support the minority Conservative government in an expected confidence vote next month that could trigger a national election. An election call could come as early as late next month if the main opposition Liberal Party decides to propose a motion of non-confidence. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative party needs support from at least one of the three opposition parties to stay in power. New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton met Harper on Tuesday and said it would be the least likely party to prop up the Conservatives.
■UNITED STATES
Hotel offers X-rated view
Some guests at a New York City hotel near an elevated park have been offering unobstructed views of themselves. Guests at the Standard Hotel in Manhattan keep failing to close the curtains as they frolic naked in front of their rooms’ floor-to-ceiling windows, easily viewed from the newly opened High Line park on an old elevated railway below. The park recently opened atop an abandoned elevated rail line. City Council speaker Christine Quinn has called the hotel’s window action “unacceptable.” Aaron Lipman works in the neighborhood and says the shows are “healthy and fun.” He said they were like TV’s Wild Kingdom.
■UNITED STATES
Microsoft issues apology
Software giant Microsoft
Corp is apologizing for altering a photo on its Web site to change the race of one of the people shown in the picture. A photo on the Seattle-based company’s Web site shows two men, one Asian and one black, and a white woman seated at a conference room table. But on the Web site of Microsoft’s Polish business unit, the black man’s head has been replaced with that of a white man. The color of his hand remains unchanged. The photo editing sparked criticism online. Some bloggers said Poland’s ethnic homogeneity may have played a role in changing the photo.
■UNITED STATES
Google courts drivers
Google on Tuesday invited motorists to share their progress — or lack thereof — with other drivers through the Internet giant’s online mapping service linked to smart phones. Google Maps is being enhanced this week to combine feedback from individual drivers with other traffic information to let people know which roads are likely to get them to their intended destinations the quickest. “It takes almost zero effort on your part,” Google Maps product manager Dave Barth said in a message on the California technology titan’s Web site. “Just turn on Google Maps for mobile before starting your car and the more people that participate, the better the resulting traffic reports get for everybody,” he said.
■MEXICO
Seized weapons destroyed
The army and prosecutors announced on Tuesday that they started destroying 79,074 firearms seized a decade or more ago. They will hold on to tens of thousands more weapons seized during the current offensive against drug cartels. Authorities launched the program by destroying some weapons at a ceremony at a military base in Mexico City. The weapons being destroyed have all been held at government warehouses for years. The Defense Department said it will retain a total of 35,372 firearms seized since President Felipe Calderon took office in late 2006, saying those guns are still evidence in criminal investigations.
VAGUE: The criteria of the amnesty remain unclear, but it would cover political violence from 1999 to today, and those convicted of murder or drug trafficking would not qualify Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday announced an amnesty bill that could lead to the release of hundreds of prisoners, including opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists detained for political reasons. The measure had long been sought by the US-backed opposition. It is the latest concession Rodriguez has made since taking the reins of the country on Jan. 3 after the brazen seizure of then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Rodriguez told a gathering of justices, magistrates, ministers, military brass and other government leaders that the ruling party-controlled Venezuelan National Assembly would take up the bill with urgency. Rodriguez also announced the shutdown
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
A Virginia man having an affair with the family’s Brazilian au pair on Monday was found guilty of murdering his wife and another man that prosecutors say was lured to the house as a fall guy. Brendan Banfield, a former Internal Revenue Service law enforcement officer, told police he came across Joseph Ryan attacking his wife, Christine Banfield, with a knife on the morning of Feb. 24, 2023. He shot Ryan and then Juliana Magalhaes, the au pair, shot him, too, but officials argued in court that the story was too good to be true, telling jurors that Brendan Banfield set
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