■SOUTH KOREA
Cops crack down on fraud
Police in Seoul yesterday announced a crackdown on 61 juveniles who staged car accidents in an insurance fraud. They said the youths collected a total of 120 million won (US$97,200) by staging 46 car accidents in a scam from June 2007 to March this year. Three doctors have also been charged with involvement. The teenagers allegedly crashed their cars or motorcycles into other vehicles. After being hospitalized with minor injuries, they claimed compensation either from the other motorists or insurance companies. Police said the doctors are suspected of either colluding in or condoning the fraud because the youths turned up in their hospital abnormally often. One teenager is accused of carrying out the scam 11 times.
■CHINA
Wal-Mart staff kill woman
A woman in Jiangxi Province was allegedly beaten to death by five employees of a Wal-Mart store who accused her of shoplifting, a police report and state media said yesterday. Police have arrested two employees from the store, while three others are being investigated, Jingdezhen City police said in a report on their Web site. The report said the woman was beaten outside her home near the Wal-Mart on Aug. 30 and died in a city hospital last Wednesday from injuries suffered during the beating. Police said the five Wal-Mart employees had stopped the woman in the street and demanded to see her receipt, but she refused because she could not verify their identities, it said. Following an argument, the five Wal-Mart employees began beating her.
■CHINA
Mine blast leaves 35 dead
A coal mine blast killed 35 miners in central Henan Province and left 44 others trapped yesterday, the government said. The pre-dawn explosion happened at Xinhua No. 4 pit in Pingdingshan City, the State Administration of Work Safety said. A statement on the administration’s Web site did not give a reason for the blast. It said 14 miners managed to flee to safety. There were 93 men working underground at the time of the blast, it said.
■INDIA
Police killed four: probe
A judicial probe showed a 19-year-old female student and three others were killed in a staged encounter by police in Gujarat in 2004, reports said yesterday. The Gujarat State police had earlier said Ishrat Jahan and three others were part of a cell of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group plotting to assassinate state Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Police said Jahan, a Mumbai college student, and her boyfriend Pranesh Pillai, along with two alleged Pakistani nationals were killed in Gujarat’s capital Ahmedabad after a police chase on June 15, 2004. Jahan’s relatives claimed she was killed by the police in a staged clash and the magisterial court ruled that the killings were staged by the police officers to win promotions and rewards.
■SAMOA
Drivers switch to left side
Car horns and sirens sounded, church bells rang out and roads were crowded with vehicles and smiling drivers as the country became the first in decades to officially switch from right-side to left-side driving. Hundreds lined streets in the capital, Apia, to witness the early-morning switch on Monday as police manned checkpoints and warned drivers to be careful. There were no immediate signs of driving difficulties despite predictions of chaos from critics who accused the government of failing to adequately prepare drivers.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Conservatives lead in poll
Britain’s Conservatives are on course to end the Labour Party’s 12 years in power at an election due within 10 months, although more than half of voters say they may still switch allegiances, a poll showed yesterday. The ComRes survey for the Independent newspaper put David Cameron’s center-right Conservatives at 40 percent, down two points on last month, with Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s ruling Labour unchanged at 24 percent. That level of support would give the Conservatives an 80-seat majority in the lower house, compared to Brown’s current working majority of 62, the Independent said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Paramilitary group to disarm
The last pro-British paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland have vowed to scrap their weapons by the end of February, an international decommissioning body said yesterday. The Ulster Defence Association and a breakaway faction have told the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning that they were committed to destroying their arsenal following similar moves by the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Red Hand Commando in June.
■GEORGIA
Strong quake rocks region
A strong 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck the northwest of the country yesterday, destroying ceilings and cracking walls in a remote mountainous area but causing no casualties, officials said. The US Geological Survey said the epicenter of the quake, which struck at 3:41am, was located 156km northwest of the capital Tbilisi in the highland Racha region. No deaths or casualties were reported in the sparsely populated area.
■SOUTH AFRICA
Vaccination program begins
The nation’s health minister is leading a push to give vaccinations and immunity-boosting vitamins to 3 million children over the next two weeks. Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi says he is concerned that children die of preventable diseases such as pneumonia and measles in Africa’s most developed nation. Temporary clinics opened on Monday, and health workers began going door-to-door.
■FRANCE
Sarkozy dismisses rumor
President Nicolas Sarkozy’s office said on Monday that reports claiming that he had demanded to be surrounded by people of his own height or smaller at a recent public appearance were “silly” and “grotesque.” The reaction was to a report by Belgian RTBF television, which cited an employee at an auto supply company as saying that people selected to be in Sarkozy’s presence during a Sept. 3 visit to the site were chosen by their height.
■FRANCE
Woman denies killing kids
A Frenchwoman denied on Monday killing her two children with poisoned cannelloni the day before she gave birth to a still-born baby whose rotting body was later found on her balcony. “I am innocent,” Marie-Helene Martinez told a court in the southern town of Aix-en-Provence, where she and her husband Jean-Paul Steijns are on trial for the murder of eight-year-old Melissa and seven-year-old Jason. The couple allegedly decided in 2005 to poison their children, believing they would be better able to pull themselves out of debt without them. “I loved my children. I could never have done this,” Martinez, 29, said as she took the stand, dressed in black and fighting back tears. Her husband told the court that both he and his wife were guilty.
■VENEZUELA
Thirty radio stations closed
The government moved ahead yesterday with efforts to “democratize” the country’s airwaves by closing nearly 30 more radio stations, a month after 34 media outlets were shuttered for “abusing” free speech. “There are 29 stations that have already had their records reviewed ... In the coming days they will be notified,” said Monday Diosdado Cabello, the director of government broadcasting watchdog Conatel. Alonso Moleiro, vice president of Venezuela’s National Association of Journalists, said the move came as no surprise. “But one should not underestimate the capacity of people for outrage,” he said.
■LEBANON
Opposition rejects Cabinet
Opposition groups formally informed President Michel Suleiman yesterday that they rejected prime minister-designate Saad al-Hariri’s government, raising the possibility that Hariri will step aside. The “March 8” opposition alliance, which includes Syria- and Iran-backed Hezbollah, said they were rejecting the line-up because they had not been consulted beforehand. “We do not consider what happened to be appropriate, either with our democratic values or in how to deal with us. We were demanding from [Hariri] to present a draft that is acceptable to our demands in order to negotiate over it,” said Gibran Bassil, a Christian opposition politician. Hariri has been unable to reach a deal with the opposition on the government since he was appointed prime minister in June.
■UNITED STATES
Woman falls after proposal
A man who proposed to his girlfriend during a hiking trip along the Billy Goat Trail in Potomac, Maryland, may have been a bit too successful at sweeping her off her feet. Rescue officials say that soon after the woman accepted the proposal during an outing along the rugged trail, she fell about 3m down a rock face and had to be rescued by helicopter. She briefly lost consciousness, but her injuries weren’t life-threatening. Authorities did not identify the woman or her fiance.
■CHILE
Landslides kill two
Landslides have swept through a popular ski area, killing two people and stranding hundreds of foreign tourists. Police say the slides blocked portions of the 50km highway between Santiago and the Farellones ski center to the northeast. The first slide on Sunday buried homes and cars and swept a woman into a river, killing her. Authorities say her one-year-old daughter is missing. A second slide on Monday swept away buildings at a mining company, killing a guard and injuring eight people. Officials say 1,300 tourists were stranded until the highway could be cleared on Monday afternoon. They blame the slides on recent heavy rains.
■UNITED STATES
City buys Oswald rifle house
A Dallas suburb has agreed to pay US$175,000 for the house where Lee Harvey Oswald stored the rifle used to assassinate president John F. Kennedy in 1963. The Dallas Morning News reported on Monday that the sum the Irving City Council agreed to pay was above the US$84,000 appraised value. Mayor Herbert Gears told the newspaper it was worth it because the house was a piece of history. The city has not yet decided what to do with the house. It once belonged to Ruth Paine, who hosted Oswald’s estranged wife, Marina. Oswald stored a gun in Paine’s garage and picked it up the night before the assassination.
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