■INDIA
Businessman gains reprieve
A court overturned on Friday the conviction of a businessman accused in the killing of a young girl but said the ruling would have no impact on other serial murder charges against him. There was nationwide revulsion in December 2006 after police recovered skulls, bones and body parts from sewage drains — dubbed the “House of Horrors” — in Noida, a wealthy satellite city of the Indian capital New Delhi. Moninder Singh Pandher and his servant Surinder Koli were sentenced to death in February for the rape and murder of 14-year-old Rimpa Halder and face 18 similar counts plus charges of abduction in a case that shocked the country. Most of the victims were children. However, on Friday, the Allahabad High Court in northern India quashed a lower court ruling that sentenced Pandher to death in the Halder case, the Press Trust of India reported. The court upheld Koli’s punishment. The ruling would have no impact on the other charges facing the businessman. In 2007, police said Koli confessed to the crimes. Some of the victims were as young as three and police believe most of the murder victims were raped or otherwise sexually assaulted. The Supreme Court stipulates that the death penalty be used only in the “rarest of rare cases.” India has not carried out an execution since 2004.
■AUSTRALIA
‘Asylum-seekers’ intercepted
The navy yesterday intercepted a ship carrying 87 people near an offshore island, most of them suspected asylum seekers, a government minister said. The ship carrying 83 passengers and four crew was stopped near Ashmore Island, a small possession north of the Australian mainland, Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor said in a statement.
■AUSTRALIA
Holiday proposal draws fire
The 250,000 Muslims in the country complained of discrimination yesterday after laws were proposed banning shops from opening at Christmas and Easter to give retail staff more family time. Islamic Friendship Association head Keysar Trad said all religious holidays should be covered not just some of them. “It does give the impression that we are a solely Christian nation and it raises the issue of other religions too, whether you are Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim,” he said.
■NEW ZEALAND
Twenty arrested in riot
Police arrested about 20 students after a riot in the university city of Dunedin, according to news reports yesterday. More than 600 students pelted police with bottles and bricks, set fires to furniture and rubbish in city streets and tipped over a car during Friday night’s riot, Radio New Zealand reported. Police wearing riot gear took two hours to disperse the crowd with pepper spray. The riots followed the arrival in Dunedin of carloads of students from Canterbury University, in Christchurch 360km north, on an annual pub crawl that has caused disturbances in the past.
■INDONESIA
Gunfire injures two
Two security guards were injured by broken glass yesterday when gunmen fired at a bus carrying security guards working for the US-owned Freeport mining operation in the restive Papua Province, police said. A series of armed attacks on vehicles near Freeport’s Grasberg gold and copper mine since July have killed three people. The mine, a subsidiary of US-based Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc, has been a source of contention between the government and the indigenous people, who say they benefit little from it.
■NETHERLANDS
Drug tourism targeted
The Cabinet wants to discourage foreigners from coming to the Netherlands to buy drugs by limiting the amounts permitted to be sold and by only allowing payment by debit card, the government said on Friday. The country has one of Europe’s most liberal soft-drug policies with legal use of marijuana, but some cities at the border near Belgium want to close down coffee shops that sell the drug because they are drawing too many foreign visitors. “In a pilot in Limburg the bar to buy cannabis will be raised,” the government said. The province of Limburg, borders Belgium and Germany. The limit for cannabis per customer will be lowered from 5g to 3g. Clients will not be allowed to pay cash.
■IRAN
Transsexual union okayed
The country is set to allow its first transsexual marriage after the would-be bride asked a court to override her father’s opposition to the match. The woman, named only as Shaghayegh, told Tehran’s family court she wanted to marry a school friend who had recently undergone a sex-change operation to become a man, but was unable to obtain her father’s blessing as legally required. Her father was summoned to court and agreed to the union on condition that the male partner, Ardashir, underwent a medical examination to prove he is now a man. Homosexuality is illegal in Iran, but the country carries out more sex changes than any other country except Thailand.
■SIERRA LEONE
Rescue mission ends
Authorities are shutting down an operation to rescue survivors of a shipwreck that has killed 90 and left well over 100 missing, presumed dead, a police officer said on Friday. The boat, which officials believe was heavily loaded with goods and at least 250 people, capsized in a storm on Tuesday, sparking calls for better safety after just 40 of the passengers appear to have survived the accident. The exact number of passengers on the boat, which was traveling between two coastal villages, is not known.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Arrests after mosque protest
British police said on Friday they arrested eight people after an anti-Islamic protest outside a mosque in northwest London turned violent. As supporters of a group calling itself Stop Islamisation of Europe gathered outside Harrow Central Mosque about 1,000 counter demonstrators turned up, some of whom police said belonged to a group called United Against Fascism. Police made the arrests for possession of offensive weapons and breaching the peace after bricks and bottles were thrown at officers. Items recovered include bottles of bleach, a hammer and a chisel, they said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Retrial sought in bomb case
Prosecutors said on Friday they would seek a retrial in the case of three Britons suspected of plotting to blow up transatlantic airliners in mid-flight using liquid explosives smuggled aboard the aircraft. On Monday, three others were found guilty of the same suicide bomb plot, but Ibrahim Savant, Arafat Waheed Khan and Waheed Zaman were found not guilty of the plan. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on whether they were guilty of conspiracy to murder, however. Britain’s Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, said after careful consideration there was a realistic prospect of convicting the three men on conspiracy to murder.
■UNITED STATES
Mom in Web sex shocker
A Detroit-area woman accused of having sex with her biological son after finding him on the Internet has been charged. Police say 35-year-old Aimee Louise Sword of Waterford Township is facing one count of third-degree criminal sexual conduct after two counts were dropped earlier this week. Authorities haven’t said when or where she and the teenager met, but said she gave him up for adoption more than 10 years earlier. She surrendered to police in April. Sword is free on bond. Her lawyer, Kenneth Burch, told the Oakland Press of Pontiac that his client “maintains her presumption of innocence.”
■UNITED STATES
Girl born on 9.9.09
At least it will be easy to remember their birthdays. An Arkansas couple welcomed a new baby girl into their lives on Wednesday — giving her the birthdate of 9-9-09. Andy and Alison Miller’s newest daughter, Molly Reid, will come home to sister Campbell, who was born on Aug. 8 last year, or 8-8-08. The Millers don’t appear poised to go for a third child on 10-10-10. Alison Miller told Rogers, Arkansas, TV station KHOG that she and her husband were going to take a rest.
■UNITED STATES
Would-be judge accused
As a candidate for judge, Joe Wilson didn’t mind sharing the name of a former ambassador. Now, he says, being mistaken for a congressman who heckled President Barack Obama has given him a backhanded bump. Wilson opened his nonpartisan campaign for a vacant seat on a Washington state court on Thursday, the day after his 49th birthday — and also the day after Republican Representative Joe Wilson gained notoriety by blurting out “you lie” during Obama’s health care address to Congress. Despite the five-term congressman’s subsequent apology, the judicial candidate’s page on the social networking Web site Facebook.com has been deluged with angry posts, campaign manager Jennifer Rinaldi said on Friday.
■UNITED STATES
Larry Gelbart dies at 81
Larry Gelbart, the award-winning writer whose sly, sardonic wit helped create such hits as Broadway’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, the films Tootsie and Oh, God! and TV’s M-A-S-H, is dead. Gelbart died at his Beverly Hills home on Friday morning after a long battle with cancer, said Creative Artists Agency, which represented him. He was 81. His wife of 53 years, Pat Gelbart said on Friday that after being married for so long, “we finished each other’s sentences.” She declined to specify the type of cancer he had. “It wasn’t a surprise. He had cancer, we’ve known that. We didn’t know what the outcome would be, the result, whatever. And so here we are and we were sort of prepared for this,” she said.
■UNITED STATES
World’s oldest person dies
Gertrude Baines, who lived to be the world’s oldest person on a steady diet of crispy bacon, fried chicken and ice cream, died on Friday at a nursing home. She was 115. Baines, who remarked last year that she enjoyed life so much she wouldn’t mind living another 100 years, died in her sleep, said Emma Camanag, administrator at Western Convalescent Hospital. The centenarian likely suffered a heart attack, said her longtime physician Charles Witt. An autopsy was scheduled to determine the cause of death. “I saw her two days ago and she was just doing fine,” Witt said. “She was in excellent shape. She was mentally alert. She smiled frequently.”
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
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
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