■TURKEMENISTAN
Ramadan amnesty granted
President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has granted amnesties for 1,284 prisoners to mark the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, state newspaper Neutral Turkmenistan said yesterday. At least 21 of the prisoners were foreign nationals, according to the list printed in the newspaper, though their countries of origin were not listed. The decision “was guided by the principles of mercy, philanthropy, validity and humanism, testimony to our great ancestors, and also with a view of further strengthening the unity of Turkmen society,” the newspaper said. It was the eighth amnesty since Berdymukhamedov took over the Central Asian state from his autocratic predecessor Saparmurat Niyazov in 2006.
■MALAYSIA
Hundreds tie the knot
More than 500 couples tied the knot at a Buddhist temple on Wednesday, in a mass wedding held on the auspicious “999” date which signifies hopes for a long-lasting marriage. Mass weddings were also held simultaneously at several others places in Malaysia, which has a large Chinese community alongside majority Muslim Malays and minority ethnic Indians. “I chose this date ‘999’ as it signifies everlasting love,” construction supervisor Thomas Wong, 30, said as his new bride, 25-year-old accountant Ivy Tan, stood by his side. “I hope to give my wife a memorable wedding, it’s once in a lifetime we get these auspicious numbers,” he said at the Thean Hou temple in the capital Kuala Lumpur. The date 9/9/09 is seen as auspicious by many ethnic Chinese, because the number nine sounds like “forever” in Chinese. Last year 470 couples tied the knot in a similar ceremony on Aug. 8.
■CHINA
Girl harbors twin
Doctors who examined the distended abdomen of an abandoned one-year-old girl found that she had a parasitic twin growing inside her, state radio and local Web sites said in reports seen on Wednesday. Meng Ru’s belly began to swell months after she was adopted by a childless couple in Luohe city in the central province of Henan, the reports said. As her abdomen grew to the size of a small drum, superstitious neighbors began calling Meng Ru a “monster” and saying she was pregnant. Her adoptive father, Kang Xi, who has been caring for her since she was abandoned, took the infant to a Luohe hospital, where scans showed the presence of the parasitic twin. “The identical baby would become a threat to Meng Ru if not removed soon,” a doctor at the hospital were quoted as saying. Facing a bill of 10,000 yuan (US$1,500) for surgery, Kang appealed for financial help for medical treatment, the reports said. The reports did not say if Kang had raised the money for Meng’s treatment or when surgeons planned to operate.
■CHINA
Parents ‘traffic’ newborn
A couple in Beijing has been tried on charges of trafficking children after they allegedly sold their newborn daughter to raise money to help rear their two sons, state media reported on Wednesday. The migrant couple is accused of selling their daughter to a middleman for 10,000 yuan in January as they left the Beijing hospital where she was born, the Beijing Times said. The middleman is facing similar charges after he sold the girl to another couple for 21,000 yuan, it said. The three were tried in a Beijing court on Tuesday, but no verdict was reached, the report said.
■TURKEY
‘Big Brother’ proves big fake
Military police raided an Istanbul villa on Monday and rescued nine women who had been tricked into thinking they were reality show contestants. The police said yesterday that the women had been held captive for two months. News reports say the nine women — including a 15-year-old — thought they were being filmed for a Big Brother-style TV show. Instead, captors sold their images on the Internet. They were rescued after some family members complained to police that they were being prevented from contacting the women.
■UNITED STATES
France takes NATO post
A French air force general made NATO history on Wednesday by becoming the first non-American to assume one of the alliance’s two supreme commander posts. At a landmark ceremony aboard the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower moored off Norfolk, Virginia, Stephane Abrial became head of Allied Command Transformation, replacing outgoing US Marine General James Mattis. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen hailed Abrial’s appointment as “a significant milestone for the Atlantic alliance” and a sign France had returned “lock, stock and barrel” to the heart of alliance. Abrial will be based at the Norfolk Naval Base, the world’s largest with 78 ships and 133 aircraft.
■GERMANY
Legislator faces porn charges
Karlsruhe prosecutors charged a lawmaker with child porn offenses on Wednesday, one day after he was stripped of his parliamentary immunity. The prosecutor’s office said Joerg Tauss was accused of 102 counts of “acquiring, distributing and possessing” pornographic images of children and teenagers between May 2007 and January this year. The 56-year-old Tauss has denied the charges, acknowledging that he had requested porn to be sent to his mobile phone but saying he was examining how such material is distributed as part of his work for parliament. “I assure you that I am no pedophile,” he said in March when the scandal first broke.
■SPAIN
Cannabis cache seized
Police in Catalonia said on Wednesday they had seized 1.7 tonnes of cannabis hidden in tomato soup mix and detained a German couple in connection with the operation. Police found the cannabis on July 27 in an abandoned van in Tortosa near Tarragona. The two Germans lived near Tarragona and they are suspected of having smuggled the narcotics into the country from Iran.
■SOUTH AFRICA
Pigeon trumps ADSL line
A carrier pigeon proved faster than the Internet on Wednesday. An 11-month-old homing pigeon named Winston took on state-owned Telkom’s ADSL line on Wednesday to see which could deliver 4 gigabytes of data to an address around 85km away the fastest. Winston was racing on behalf of The Unlimited, a telemarketing company based in Durban, which wanted to transfer the data from its call center in Howick, north of Durban, to its offices in Hillcrest, on the city’s northern outskirts. Visibility was poor on race day but Winston completed the flight in one hour and eight minutes. The entire data transfer operation — including the upload of the data card onto the pigeon’s legs and input into the computer system at the other side — took a total two hours, six minutes and 57 seconds. During all that time, Telkom’s notoriously slow ADSL line had managed to send only around 4 percent of the data.
■UNITED STATES
‘Spanking’ lawmaker resigns
A Republican state lawmaker from Southern California has resigned after he was caught on tape bragging about his penchant for spanking and of having sex with female lobbyists. Assemblyman Mike Duvall said on Wednesday in a statement that his comments were inappropriate and have become “a major distraction.” The 54-year-old lawmaker, whose is married with two adult children, made the comments to another lawmaker during a break in a committee hearing that was caught on a live microphone. In a recording broadcast by KCAL-TV in Los Angeles, the 54-year-old lawmaker talks about a recent sexual escapade with a woman he said was 18 years younger than him. “I like spanking her,” he said on the videotape. He then bragged about an affair he was having with another lobbyist.
■CANADA
US soldier requests asylum
A lesbian who deserted the US military has requested asylum in Canada, claiming she faced harassment and death threats from fellow soldiers over her sexual orientation, media said on Wednesday. Private Bethany Smith, 21, claimed she had asked the US military for a discharge after being outed by another soldier who spotted her walking hand in hand with a woman at a mall, but she was denied because her superiors wanted to send her to Afghanistan, she told Canadian media. In deferring her case until she returned from Afghanistan, the US military broke its so-called “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy of discharging openly gay members, she contended. A Canadian immigration panel rejected her refugee claim — believed to be the first by a lesbian or gay US soldier — but she appealed on Tuesday to a federal court to overturn the tribunal’s decision.
■CANADA
Drunk driver gets life
A drunk driver with 19 convictions on his record, including an accident that took the life of a woman last year, was sentenced by a Quebec court to life in prison, court officials said. Roger Walsh, 57, was found guilty of drunk driving last October when he struck and killed Anee Khudaverdian, 47, a mother of two young children. Walsh, who did not even stop to help the victim, was apprehended some 10km from the accident scene. He pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and vehicular homicide while drunk — the 19th time since 1971 that he was found to have taken the wheel of a motor vehicle while intoxicated.
■UNITED STATES
Man held on sex charges
A Hawaii man accused of having illicit sex with a 12-year-old girl in Cambodia is being held without bond in Honolulu pending a detention hearing. Federal prosecutors say Richard Mitchell of Kamuela, Hawaii, was arrested by police in Cambodia in August last year. He remained in custody until he was returned to the US on Saturday, when he was arrested at Honolulu International Airport.
■UNITED STATES
Couples marry for US$0.99
Nine couples marked Wednesday’s special date 09/09/09 by getting married for the low price of just US$0.99. The mass ceremony took place as part of a special promotion for the 99 Cents Store in Hollywood, California. Local TV station KTLA showed the brides and grooms sauntering down the aisles adorned in US$0.99 flowers and other bargain decorations. The ceremony was followed by a buffet of US$0.99 food, before the store whisked the happy couples off for luxury honeymoons.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was