■AFGHANISTAN
Karzai likely to win
President Hamid Karzai will likely emerge as the winner of recent elections even after fraudulent votes are discarded, the head of the CIA said in an interview aired on Friday. “I think that what appears to be the case is that even after they eliminate some of the votes that resulted because of fraud, that Karzai ... still looks like the individual who is going to win that election,” Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta told US-funded broadcaster Voice of America. A CIA spokesman later stressed that Panetta was predicting the eventual outcome of the political deadlock, not expressing a preference.
■INDONESIA
Quake rocks Bali
A strong earthquake shook the popular Indonesian resort island of Bali early yesterday, injuring at least seven people and sending panicked tourists and residents fleeing out of homes and hotels. No tsunami warning was issued and there were no immediate reports of major damage. The magnitude 5.8 quake hit just after 6am 75km south of Denpasar, the island’s capital, the US Geological Survey said. Indonesia’s Meteorological and Geophysics Agency put the quake at a more powerful 6.4 magnitude.
■CHINA
Doctors miss 15cm knife
Doctors failed to find a 15cm knife blade that was embedded in a woman’s pelvis for four months after she was stabbed with the weapon, local media said on Thursday. Shen Ping was stabbed in the hip during a robbery on May 6 in Jiangsu Province, the Shanghai-based Oriental Morning Post reported. The handle apparently broke off the carving knife during the attack and left the entire blade embedded in Shen’s pelvic cavity. But doctors who examined her following the robbery failed to locate the blade, and when Shen went for further checks after complaining of pain she was told that she was probably suffering from a bladder infection. Following an ultrasound scan, the blade was finally removed by surgeons at Shanghai’s Anting Hospital on Tuesday, the newspaper said.
■SOUTH KOREA
Pornographers disappointed
Prosecutors on Friday rejected accusations by foreign pornographers that local Internet users have breached copyright by uploading their content onto Web sites. The prosecutors’ office said it would investigate an unspecified number of Internet users just for distributing pornography. In an unusual case, a local law firm representing 50 US and Japanese porn producers filed suit in July, accusing about 10,000 people of pirating the foreign content for profit. Some local Internet users allegedly earned up to US$25,000 a month from users. Prosecutors charged just 10 habitual offenders with breach of copyright, which is punishable by jail in South Korea. Disgruntled foreign pornographers filed a second complaint last month against 300 habitual uploaders on similar charges.
■HONG KONG
Detective jailed for rape
A detective was jailed on Friday for 12 years for raping a teenage girl and molesting three other victims, aged 16 to 21, in the identity parade room of a police station. Leung Lai-chung, 30, used the police computer to contact female victims of crimes and then invited them back to the police station on false pretences, the High Court heard. He attacked them in the city’s Mongkok police station over a 10-day period in November, raping a 19-year-old woman who had reported a lost purse and sexually assaulting the three others.
■BULGARIA
Lotto numbers twice lucky
The draw of the same six winning numbers twice in a row in the national lottery was a freak coincidence, officials said on Thursday. Sports Minister Svilen Neikov ordered an investigation after the numbers 4, 15, 23, 24, 35 and 42 were selected, in a different order, by a machine live on TV on Sept. 6 and 10. The results caused suspicions of manipulation. An investigation found no wrongdoing in the draw or determining the winners, its chairman Konstantin Simeonov said. The chance of the same six numbers coming up twice in two consecutive rounds was one in more than 4 million but was not impossible, respected mathematician Michail Konstantinov said. An unprecedented 18 people guessed all six numbers when they were drawn the second time and each got 10,164 levs (US$7,700). Nobody won the top prize the first time.
■CYPRUS
Freak twister hurts 10
Ten people were hurt when a freak twister hit parts of the capital on Friday, felling trees, closing roads and damaging property, police said. Emergency services fielded scores of calls when the tornado, accompanied by strong rain and hail, struck parts of Nicosia, causing traffic chaos and damaging cars and property. Police said 10 people were treated in hospital for minor injuries. “I was stopped at traffic lights when suddenly rubbish began flying around. Then a large tree fell and hit a car next to mine. I just opened my car door and ran for shelter,” one woman said, adding that she was not hurt.
■SOUTH AFRICA
Kill those pesky ‘wabbits’
Thousands of rabbits are in the firing line on Robben Island, the rocky island off Cape Town where anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela was jailed for 18 years, authorities said on Friday. Announcing a major cull of wildlife on the island, one of the country’s top tourist attractions, Robben Island museum’s acting CEO Henry Bredekamp said: “The island is heading for an environmental disaster.” SAPA news agency quoted Bredekamp as saying an estimated 25,000 rabbits were causing “absolute havoc” on the 3km-long, 1.9km-wide island by destroying vegetation and burrowing under buildings. Beginning next month, authorities will begin shooting rabbits, fallow deer and cats, he said.
■AUSTRIA
Man set in-laws on fire
The court in the southern city of Graz has convicted a man for killing his in-laws by setting them on fire with a homemade flame-thrower. The court sentenced the 49-year-old, who was not identified by name, to 12 years in prison for the October 2008 incident. The woman burned to death in her bed, while her husband’s body was found on a bench outside their home in the village of St Magdalena am Lemberg. The woman’s lower legs had been amputated because of diabetes-related complications. Both victims were 84 years old. The man, who tried to commit suicide afterward, told the court on Thursday that his father-in-law had verbally abused him. The ruling has been appealed.
■GREECE
Highway pot grower nabbed
A man has been arrested for allegedly growing marijuana in the median strip of the nation’s main highway. The pot plants weren’t little seedlings, nor were they well-concealed. Police said the 35-year-old was caught on Thursday in the middle of a six-lane highway linking Athens with Thessaloniki, harvesting 42 marijuana plants up to 1.8m tall. A small quantity of dried pot was also found in his home.
■UNITED STATES
Pang death likely suicide
Investigators believe Danny Pang (彭日成), the Taiwan-born international financier who died in California last weekend while facing charges of fraud, committed suicide, a police spokesman said on Friday. Pang was indicted in July on charges of illegally structuring financial transactions to evade currency-reporting requirements. Pang died on Saturday at a hospital, a day after police and paramedics were called to his home. “It is our opinion that the death appears to be suicide,” said Newport Beach Police Sergeant Evan Sailor. Pang’s death won’t be ruled a suicide until the coroner’s investigation is finished, Sailor said. The Orange County coroner has ruled out foul play.
■UNITED STATES
‘Guiding Light’ off the air
The US show Guiding Light aired its final episode on Friday, 72 years and more than 15,000 episodes after its first broadcast as a CBS radio program in 1937. The show, the story of three families, moved to television in 1952 and first broadcast in color in 1967. In the finale, the main characters, Josh Lewis and Reva Shayne, decide to marry “again,” then drive off in Josh’s vintage pickup truck on an unspecified adventure. “You ready?” Josh asks Reva. “Always,” she replies. It was a long and rocky run for the show’s main characters, who have married, divorced and remarried. Reva drove off a Florida bridge, washed ashore on a Caribbean island and married a prince there. The prince’s evil brother dumped her into the ocean and she was swept back to the US. The character was also presumed dead three times and died once but came back to life.
■UNITED STATES
‘Killer’ claims distress
A man accused of beheading his wife at the television station that the couple founded to counter stereotypes of Muslims plans to claim emotional distress was behind the killing. Muzzammil Hassan, 45, is scheduled to be tried in January on a charge of second-degree murder in the death of 37-year-old Aasiya Hassan. A psychiatric defense would allow jurors to find him guilty of a lesser charge of manslaughter, Muzzammil Hassan’s attorney said on Friday. “Extreme emotional disturbance is not an insanity defense,” attorney James Harrington said afterward. Muzzammil Hassan had been served with divorce papers a week before his wife’s body was found at the offices of Bridges TV near Buffalo, New York, where the couple also lived. Hassan was arrested after walking into the Orchard Park police station on Feb. 12 and telling officers his wife was dead. The prosecution’s case is built on alleged admissions and forensic evidence.
■UNITED STATES
Hand found in yard
A human hand has been unearthed from the yard of a Maryland home, but police say this is no “whodunit.” Investigators believe it’s a decades-old medical school specimen left by a former resident. It was an odd discovery for the electrician who dug it up in the northeastern part of the state. Only the fingertips showed signs of decay, the Cecil Whig reported. Maryland State Police Trooper First Class Dave Feltman says the hand found on Tuesday appeared to have been surgically removed. The son of a previous owner of the house told police it was a souvenir he took home as a student at the University of Maryland’s medical school more than 50 years ago. Police said they believed his account but had sent it to the state medical examiner as part of routine procedure.
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