■MYANMAR
Rare turtle rediscovered
The rare Arakan forest turtle, once thought to be extinct, has been rediscovered in a remote forest, boosting chances of saving the reptile after hunting almost destroyed its population, researchers said yesterday. Texas researcher Steven Platt and staff from the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society discovered five of the brown-and-tan-spotted turtles in May during a survey of wildlife in the Rakhine Yoma Elephant Sanctuary. The sanctuary contains thick stands of impenetrable bamboo forests, with the only trails made by the park’s elephants, said Platt, of Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas.
■INDONESIA
Quake death toll rises
At least 100 people were likely killed by a major 7.0-magnitude quake that rocked the main island of Java last week, an official said yesterday. Authorities had confirmed 74 were killed in the quake, which struck off the south coast of Java on Wednesday, disaster management agency spokesman Priyadi Kardono said. Another 34 people were also believed buried and likely dead under tonnes of boulders and earth by an earthquake-triggered landslide in the West Java village of Cikangkareng 130km south of Jakarta, Kardono said. “The bodies will be crushed if we use heavy machinery like excavators,” he said.
■HONG KONG
Police probe new acid attack
Police said yesterday they were investigating a fourth acid attack in less than a year in one of the world’s most densely populated neighborhoods. Eleven people suffered burns on Sunday when a man flung liquid at a market trader in the bustling Mongkok district, police said. Mongkok, a haven for shoppers looking for cheap clothes and electronics, has one of the planet’s highest number of inhabitants per square kilometer. Forty-six people were injured in December when two bottles of corrosive liquid were tossed from a building into the street.
■NEPAL
Top wanted man arrested
Police have arrested one of the most wanted men in the country, the alleged leader of a shadowy militant group blamed in deadly attacks on a church and a mosque, the government said yesterday. Ram Prasad Mainali, whom authorities believe is the leader of the underground Nepal Defense Army, was arrested in the southeastern town of Biratnagar on Saturday after months of investigation, Home Ministry spokesman Ramratna Pandey said. Pandey said Mainali was being brought to Kathmandu for questioning and that he has not been charged with any crime.
■VIETNAM
Mom seeks blogger’s release
The mother of a detained blogger made a tearful plea yesterday for her daughter’s release after two other online writers were freed. “Help us to get her free!” Nguyen Thi Tuyet Lan said in a tearful telephone conversation from the southern coastal city of Nha Trang, where her daughter, Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, 30, has been held since Wednesday. Quynh blogged under the name “Me Nam.” “My daughter is still detained until now. I tried to visit her this morning but the police prevented me,” she said. Quynh had written about the sensitive topic of the country’s relations with China, her mother said. She had blogged about a controversial bauxite mining project in the Central Highlands and also about two South China Sea archipelagos, the Paracels and Spratleys, her mother said.
■MEXICO
Politician, family slain
A local politician was brutally slain along with his wife and two sons, officials and media in the southeastern state of Tabasco said on Sunday. Jose Francisco Fuentes, 43, was beheaded; his sons, ages eight and 10, were suffocated; and his wife was shot in the head, local news media said citing police sources. State officials confirmed that Fuentes, 43, a candidate for state legislature with the powerful Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) who lived in the state capital Villahermosa, was killed along with his wife and children but provided no other details. Fuentes had nearly 40 percent support against 21 percent for his closest rival for the Oct. 18 election, Tabasco media reported.
■UNITED STATES
Cougar caught in Seattle
A cougar that apparently had lived in Seattle for more than two weeks and forced the city’s largest park to close was captured early on Sunday and returned to the wild, state wildlife officials said. The cougar was immbobilized with a tranquilizer in Discovery Park, Department of Fish and Wildlife Captain Bill Hebner said. An enforcement officer and the dogs tracked the animal after authorities were told it had been spotted on Saturday night, the latest sighting in or near the 216-hectare preserve, he said. The cougar is a two-and-a-half-year-old male, weighs 63.6kg and is in very good health, Hebner said. After examining the animal, wildlife agents drove it to be released in the Cascade foothills near Skykomish, about 72km northeast of Seattle.
■UNITED STATES
Gunman says he’s sorry
A white supremacist who killed a postal worker and wounded five people at a Los Angeles area Jewish community center in a 1999 shooting spree said he had renounced his racist views. In a letter to a Los Angeles Daily News reporter, Buford Furrow Jr said he regretted the pain he had caused. Furrow, who is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole, described himself as a “model inmate who has shunned criminal activity.” Ten years ago Furrow wounded three little children, a teenager and an adult at a Granada Hills community center. He later killed letter carrier Joseph Ileto.
■NETHERLANDS
Man is longest TV watcher
A 28-year-old man on Sunday finished 86 uninterrupted hours of TV watching to become the world record holder, Dutch broadcaster NOS said. The time Efraim van Oeveren, from the town of Tilburg, spent awake in front of a TV was six hours longer than the previous award-winning couch potato from New Delhi. Van Oeveren fought exhaustion together with two other Dutch contestants, attended by doctors and a jury. A 20-year-old competitor threw in the towel at 40 hours, while the 30-year-old TV fan held out for 72 hours. The rules of the ordeal allowed contestants one 5-minute pause per hour to rest their eyes or to save the time to allow for showers and so on.
■GAZA STRIP
Dress code dropped
The ministry of justice in the Hamas government ruling the Gaza Strip said on Sunday it was annulling a controversial decision to impose a special Islamic dress code on female lawyers. The decision, originally signed on July 9 by Abdel Ra’ouf al-Halabi, the head of the Highest Council of Justice, was annulled by al-Halabi himself. The July 9 decision triggered controversy among lawyers and human rights groups. They held a series of meetings and considered the resolution as contrary to the Basic Law.
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