■INDIA
Floods kill at least 12
Twelve people were killed and more than a dozen injured after heavy overnight rains swept away slum dwellings in Mumbai, police said yesterday. About 15 to 20 homes, most of them illegal shanties, were washed away in a landslide in the Andheri District, senior police officer Amitabh Gupta was quoted as saying by the domestic Press Trust of India news agency. Landslides are common during the annual monsoon season, which lasts from June until September.
■BANGLADESH
Officials avoid wearing suits
Dhaka has told government officials to avoid wearing suits, jackets and ties during the sweltering summer to save electricity used on air conditioning. The Cabinet announced its decision on Tuesday, saying officials should wear open-necked shirts and trousers — changing a dress code that had been in place since 1982. Mid and senior-level officials would previously don a suit even in the March to November summer months, when temperatures can reach 40ºC. The change is the latest in a series of government steps to try to save electricity in the country, which suffers chronic power shortages even though only 45 percent of its 150 million people have access to electricity.
■MALAYSIA
TV ad angers Indonesia
Kuala Lumpur sought to allay anger in Indonesia yesterday over the use of a Balinese dance in a promotional spot for a TV documentary series on Malaysia, with officials laying the blame on cable network Discovery Channel. The clip sparked outrage in Indonesia, with hundreds staging rallies and accusing Malaysia of stealing the Pendet dance. Cultural Minister Rais Yatim said the mistake was committed by Discovery Channel, which produced the clip to promote its series Enigmatic Malaysia. On Tuesday, about 30 Indonesians pelted the Malaysian embassy in Jakarta with rotten eggs.
■AUSTRALIA
Sydney bigwig gunned down
A property developer who once tried to sue the sultan of Brunei was gunned down in front of his young son outside their exclusive Sydney home, police said yesterday. Michael McGurk, 45, was shot once in the head by a lone gunman as he stepped from his luxury Mercedes in the harborside suburb of Cremorne with his 10-year-old son on Thursday night, Superintendent Geoff Beresford said. Beresford would not confirm claims McGurk had feared a hitman was on his trail and had approached police to ask for protection, but said the developer appeared to be the victim of a callous and “very targeted” act. “We are very open-minded at the moment but what I can confirm is the deceased is very well-known to the police,” he said. McGurk, who in 2007 unsuccessfully tried to sue the Sultan of Brunei over an alleged US$8 million agreement to buy a 400-year-old gold-lined miniature Koran, was alive when police arrived but died a short time later.
■SRI LANKA
Former Tigers find jobs
A group of former child soldiers from Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels have won jobs on construction sites in Malaysia after undergoing re-training, the government said on Thursday. The seven men were among hundreds of former child soldiers who surrendered before government troops defeated the Tigers in May. Now aged between 19 and 21, the seven joined the Tigers’ ranks as children. Some former fighters are not charged over their involvement with the rebels and undergo training in plumbing, masonry, carpentry and electrical work.
■RUSSIA
Granny ‘dealer’ arrested
Police on Thursday announced the arrest of a 79-year-old pensionerwho had earned notoriety as a major drug dealer in the northern city of Saint Petersburg. The woman — who had built up a following among drug addicts who knew her as “Baba Tonya” — had already been arrested for drugs trafficking in July, the anti-drugs police said in a statement. “But this did not prevent Baba Tonya from continuing to sell heroin,” the statement said.
■NETHERLANDS
Police ruin cannabis test
Police were left red-faced after swooping on what they thought was an illegal cannabis farm only to partly dismantle a scientific experiment, the university that owns the plants said on Thursday. “More than half the plants were destroyed,” said Simon Vink, spokesman for the University of Wageningen in the east of the country. The plants were part of a legal experiment on the suitability of cannabis fibers for the production of textiles, paper and synthetic materials, he said. “The project had been under way for years and was in its final phase, which would have allowed us to introduced these new fibers to the market.”
■UNITED STATES
Man with 100 dogs charged
A 56-year-old man found in a Detroit-area house with more than 100 living and 150 dead dogs has been charged with two counts of animal cruelty. Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy on Thursday charged Kenneth Lang Jr with one count related to the living dogs and the second for the dead dogs. He faces up to four years in prison on each felony count if convicted. Worthy said some of the dead dogs were emaciated from poor nutrition and some may have been euthanized with an injection to the heart. Authorities removed the dogs from the Dearborn house in July.
■GERMANY
Philips unveils sex toys
Philips, the consumer electronics company which for decades has been a byword for Dutch solidity, said on Thursday in Berlin it had begun manufacturing sex toys. Three electrical vibrators are to be marketed under a new product segment to be known as “relationship care.” They are to be shown at the IFA consumer electronics show from yesterday through Wednesday. One of the “intimate massage” devices is available with a dish to pre-warm it to skin temperature. There is also a “his and hers” set, the company Web site showed. A Philips executive, Andrea Ragnetti, defended the move, saying scientific surveys in Britain showed 40 percent of respondents used sex toys and 35 percent said they would use them if they were well made and supplied by respectable brands. Ragnetti said Philips would remove the “dirty” aura around such toys.
■AUSTRIA
Bill on deserters pushed
A bill to fully rehabilitate Austrian deserters from Hitler’s Wehrmacht should be passed soon, the Green party demanded on Thursday in Vienna. Court judgments against deserters were repealed soon after the war, but “deserters faced massive discrimination after 1945” as they were seen as traitors by the public, Green parliamentarian Albert Steinhauser said. A 2005 law honored victims of the National Socialist judicial system, but did not specifically mention soldiers who fled the Wehrmacht. The new bill, which has already been introduced by Steinhauser’s party, would send a political signal about these victims, who have only a few years left to live, he said.
■UNITED STATES
Bank stumps armless man
A man in Tampa, Florida, who sought to cash his wife’s check at her bank ran into a problem: the teller wanted his thumbprint. Problem was, Steve Valdez has no arms. He went into a Bank of America branch to cash the check at his wife’s request, the St. Petersburg Times reported on Thursday. The teller told him that without an account at the bank, he would have to give a thumbprint to cash a check. Valdez, 54, uses prosthetic arms since he was born armless. “She said, ‘Obviously you aren’t going to be able to give us a thumbprint,’” Valdez said. He showed the bank teller two picture ID cards to no avail. Valdez did neither and left. “That’s just shocking to me. This can’t have been the first time this has ever come up,” Valdez told the newspaper. Bank of America has apologized.
■UNITED STATES
Pinky lost in health protest
California authorities say a clash between opponents and supporters of health care reform ended with one man biting off another man’s finger. Ventura County Sheriff’s Captain Frank O’Hanlon said about 100 people demonstrating in favor of health care reforms rallied on Wednesday night on a street corner in Thousand Oaks. One protester walked across the street to confront about 25 counter-demonstrators. O’Hanlon says the man got into an argument and fist fight, during which he bit off the left pinky of a 65-year-old man who opposed health care reform. A hospital spokeswoman said the victim had Medicare.
■UNITED STATES
Crash costs woman her nails
A Salt Lake City woman who held a record for her long fingernails before they broke off in a car crash says it was the most dramatic event of her life. But Lee Redmond, who lost the fingernails in February, says it’s now much easier to do things and her hands seem to fly with the weight of the nails gone. The 68-year-old won’t grow her nails out again, saying it took 30 years the first time and she may not live for another 30. Redmond hadn’t cut her nails since 1979 and entered the Guinness World Records book in 2002 for longest fingernails on a woman. The Guinness Web site says her nails measured a total of more than 8.53m long last year, with the longest nail on her right thumb at 88.9cm.
■UNITED STATES
Builders find skeleton
Construction workers installing support for a new deck at a home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, dug up the concrete floor of a shed and found a skeleton buried there with a gun that appears to be about 100 years old. Police spokesman Frank Pasquarello says the items found on Thursday afternoon may be from a market on the property. Forensics examinations are expected to reveal the age and gender of the remains.
■UNITED STATES
Frog found in Pepsi can
A Florida man who cracked open an ice cold can of Pepsi did find the dismembered remains of a frog, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said on Thursday. “It has been verified, and it was indeed a frog,” Charles Watson, a FDA spokesman. Fred DeNegri of Ormond Beach told CNN that he was taken aback by the “disgusting” blob in his drink.
■UNITED STATES
Smelly proposal a stinker
The proposal to bar smelly people from Honolulu buses failed to pass the Honolulu City Council. Lawyers from the city and the American Civil Liberties Union said it was vague and could lead to unconstitutionally subjective judgments.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of