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World News Quick Take

■SRI LANKA

Tamil journalist jailed

The High Court yesterday sentenced a Tamil journalist to 20 years in prison after convicting him on terrorism charges, officials said. J.S. Tissainayagam, 45, who contributed to the local Sunday Times and ran a Web site, Outreachsl.com, that focused on the island’s Tamil population, was found guilty of causing “racial hatred” and “supporting terrorism,” a court official said. The court found that he had received money from the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam to fund his Web site. Tissainayagam has been in custody since his arrest in March last year, despite appeals by local and international media rights groups for his release. He is the first Sri Lankan journalist to be convicted under the Prevention of Terrorism Act enacted in the early 1980s. His lawyers said they would file an appeal.



■MYANMAR

Suu Kyi to renovate home

Detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi plans to renovate her crumbling lakeside home to keep out trespassers, her lawyer said yesterday. The Nobel peace laureate’s house arrest was extended by 18 months earlier this month for violating her detention rules after a bizarre incident in which an American man swam uninvited to her Yangon residence in May. Nyan Win, one of her lawyers and the spokesman for her National League for Democracy party, said Suu Kyi had been in contact with an architect about making renovations. “She worries for the security of her house and that’s why she wants to repair it,” he said. “It is to prevent another trespassing.” Nyan Win said Suu Kyi would pay for the renovations.



■VIETNAM

Dissident blogger detained

A blogger who criticized the Communist Party’s policies has been detained by police, his close friend said yesterday, days after another popular blogger was fired from his job at a state-controlled newspaper. Bui Thanh Hieu, who writes his blog under the pen name “Nguoi Buon Gio” or “Wind Trader,” was taken into police custody in Hanoi on Thursday, said a close friend, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. The friend said that on Sunday she talked to Hieu’s wife, Lien, who said she spoke briefly to her husband while he was in the police station on Thursday. Hieu’s postings have been critical of the party’s handling of its relations with neighboring China and land disputes with the Roman Catholic Church. Hieu, 37, has also criticized a controversial government-backed bauxite mining project in the central highlands. Police declined to comment.



■CHINA

Six killed by lightning

Six farmers were killed in Anhui Province on Sunday when the hut they were sheltering in during a storm was struck by lightning, Xinhua news agency reported. Another farmer in the hut was injured and taken to hospital, Xinhua quoted local officials as saying.



■CHINA

Official blames Internet

The women’s volleyball team spend too much time surfing the Internet, which directly contributed to their poor performance at the recent world grand prix in Japan, a senior official said yesterday. China, whose women have won two Olympic and multiple world volleyball titles, finished fifth with a young team in Tokyo last week. “They spend too much time online after a match or training, are too self-centered and haven’t enough direct and close interaction,” Li Quanqiang, deputy director of the nation’s volleyball administration, told the China Daily.



■UNITED KINGDOM

Hundreds of children held

More than 400 children are being held in UK immigration detention centers with their families, the Guardian newspaper reported yesterday, citing official figures. The paper said 470 children, many from countries suffering poverty and conflict such as Zimbabwe, Sudan, Sri Lanka and Democratic Republic of Congo, were locked up after arriving in Britain. The figures from the Home Office were provided for a single day — June 30 this year. Most of the children were aged under five, and almost one third were held for longer than 28 days, the newspaper said. Out of 225 children released from detention in the second quarter of this year, only 100 were then removed from the country. The Home Office said: “The UK Border Agency fully recognizes its responsibilities towards children but these responsibilities have to be exercised alongside our duty to enforce the laws on immigration and asylum.”



■RUSSIA

Al-Qaeda suspect slain

Security forces said yesterday they killed an al-Qaeda agent and a second rebel fighter in Dagestan. Officials say cash from foreign-based radical Islamic organizations is funding the recent surge of violence in Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia in which dozens of people have died. “A representative of an international terrorist organization in the North Caucasus tasked to oversee terrorist acts in Dagestan was neutralized during a combat operation,” a security officer told Vesti-24 television news channel. “He is an Algerian national widely known in underground gangs as ‘Doctor Muhammed,’” said the official, who was dressed in combat gear and stood with his back to the camera. The two men were killed stormed a house on Sunday night, news agencies reported.



■RUSSIA

Elderly man kills three

Interfax news agency says an elderly man shot and killed three of his village neighbors before turning his unregistered hunting rifle on himself in the Yaroslavl Province northeast of Moscow. The retiree fatally shot two men and a woman and wounded a second woman. Police were trying to determine a motive.



■EGYPT

Alleged con woman on trial

A woman who fled the country 22 years ago after defrauding people of millions of dollars went on trial on Sunday following her arrest at Cairo airport on Friday. Hoda Abdel Moneim, 62, dubbed the “Iron Lady” by the press, faces fraud charges in connection with a pyramid scheme she ran in the 1980s, swindling more than 45 million Egyptian pounds (US$8 million). She was banned from travel at the time pending an investigation but managed to flee the country. In 1996 she was sentenced in absentia to 64 years in prison. She was arrested after landing at the Cairo airport when authorities found she was traveling on an expired passport, a judicial source said.



■FRANCE

‘Ortolan hunts’ denounced

Activists staged a commando operation at dawn on Sunday to denounce the capture of a rare, tiny songbird that is roasted and eaten whole by gourmets in defiance of a 10-year ban. It has been illegal to hunt, sell or eat the Ortolan Bunting in the country since 1999, but that has not stopped thousands of the birds from falling prey each year to poachers, who fatten them up in cages and sell them on the black market for up to 150 euros (US$215). The Bird Protection League, LPO, sent a seven-strong squad of activists to search out and destroy traps set for the Ortolon in the Landes region.



■UNITED STATES

Aide gave patient nails to eat

A Pennsylvania mental hospital worker has admitted giving four nails to a patient and getting her to swallow them. Athena Marie Sidlar, 28, a former psychiatric aide trainee at Allentown State Hospital, pleaded guilty on Wednesday in Lehigh County Court to reckless endangerment, according to the Morning Call newspaper. Police say that in January, she showed an 18-year-old female patient how to swallow nails. Four nails had to be removed from the patient’s stomach. Sidlar says she has bipolar disorder and swallows nails and other metal objects. Her attorney, Ettore Angelo of Quakertown, said his client is trying to battle her affliction.



■UNITED STATES

Reactor back online

A suburban New York nuclear power reactor is running again after shutting down because of a leak in an oil pipe. Plant spokesman Jerry Nappi says Indian Point 3 went back in service around 6.30am local time on Saturday. It shut down automatically on Thursday night because of the leak. Nappi said no radiation was released. The episode marked the reactor’s fourth unplanned shutdown since May. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan says the incident probably will trigger more inspection and oversight, though that won’t be clear until after the Indian Point plant’s next quarterly performance assessment.



■UNITED STATES

Horse gives family wild ride

A spooked horse pulling a carriage with seven people aboard took off through downtown Salt Lake City and didn’t stop until it crashed through a police officer’s bicycle and ran into a parked car. Jami Rodriguez and her family from Idaho boarded the carriage on Saturday. She says the horse soon broke into a trot and finally a run. They initially thought the horse was supposed to be running but then realized it wasn’t part of the show, the Deseret News reported. The carriage clipped a bank building and ran over the bicycle of a police officer who tried to help. After several blocks, the horse finally ran into a car. No one was seriously injured. The horse also didn’t appear to be seriously harmed.



■MEXICO

Mariachis set world record

Guadalajara boasts the world’s biggest mariachi band. A total of 549 musicians got together to win the record for the birthplace of mariachi on Sunday, playing several songs in just over 10 minutes. The old record belonged to 520 mariachis who performed in San Antonio, Texas, in 2007, said Francisco Beckman, an organizer of the record-breaking attempt.



■UNITED STATES

Brazen burglar grabs TV

Police in Florida say a burglar who made off with a man’s valuables returned to the home later while investigators were there and snatched what he couldn’t carry on his first trip: a 45kg plasma-screen TV. The burglar had left the TV in the backyard and investigators were going to dust it for fingerprints. But hours after the first burglary and with a Pensacola Police investigator still at the home, the robber came back and took the TV. “They were all very embarrassed,” the man who lives at the house, Steve Fluegge, told the Pensacola News Journal. Police searched the neighborhood with dogs, but couldn’t find the burglar or the TV. Police have offered to pay for the TV.


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