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■THAILAND

Record jewel heist at fair

Three men posing as customers stole US$1.7 million in jewelry from a Bangkok gems fair over the weekend in what police yesterday called the biggest heist in recent memory in the country. The men entered a booth at the Bangkok Gems & Jewelry Fair on Saturday and asked the vendor to open a display case containing nearly 100 items with a reported value of 56 million baht (US$1.7 million), then distracted her and ran off with it, said police Lieutenant Colonel Pairote Rattanamanee, in charge of the investigation. It was not immediately clear how the men, believed to be unarmed and of Middle Eastern descent, managed to slip past security at the fair’s convention hall, he said.



■JAPAN

Female elderly top 25%

A record one in four Japanese women is aged 65 or over, internal affairs ministry figures showed yesterday, highlighting fears of a looming demographic crisis in the world’s No. 2 economy. As of Sept. 15, 25.4 percent of the female population were aged 65 or over, topping 25 percent for the first time since comparable data began in 1950, the ministry said. Men and women combined, Japan had a record 28.98 million elderly people, up by 800,000 from a year earlier. The nation’s fertility rate was 1.37 children per woman last year, well below the more than 2 percent needed to maintain the population of 127 million.



■CAMBODIA

Gold thieves use grenades

Two thieves hurled several hand grenades into a local market before robbing a gold vendor of a small amount of gold and cash, the Cambodia Daily newspaper reported yesterday. Provincial police chief Sann Sothea said six gold vendors were injured in Friday’s attack on the market in Kampong Cham province. The robbers escaped with US$250 and an unknown quantity of gold. “It is the first time that the gold robbers used grenades to rob the market vendors like this in Kampong Cham province,” Sann Sothea said. Two vendors were seriously injured in the blasts and four were slightly hurt, he said. Seven market stalls were destroyed.



■SINGAPORE

Piracy at five-year high

Piracy in the South China Sea has hit a five-year high, with tankers and large container ships most prone to attack, an international monitoring agency said yesterday. A spokeswoman for the information sharing center of the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia said there were at least 10 cases of sea attacks reported this year. This has surpassed the previous record of nine set during 2005, and more reported cases this year were still being verified. The 10th case involved a Singapore-registered liquefied petroleum gas tanker boarded by six pirates on Sept. 19, with the attacker assaulting the duty officer and robbing the ship’s crew, the center said.



■AUSTRALIA

Inheritance law revised

Mistresses and their offspring are to get a share of the family fortune if unfaithful husbands die without making a will specifically denying them an inheritance, New South Wales legal officer Ruth Pollard said yesterday. She said the legislative changes, which will take effect next year, recognized that some people had “multiple spouses.” She said the amendments would cover same-sex partnerships in which the deceased might have been involved with more than one person and by religious and cultural groups in which men have more than one wife.



■UNITED STATES

Lawmakers ponder benefits

The House of Representatives is taking up emergency legislation offered by Democratic Representative Jim McDermott to provide 13 weeks of extended unemployment benefits for more than 300,000 jobless people who live in states with unemployment rates of at least 8.5 percent and who are scheduled to run out of benefits by the end of this month. The extension would supplement the 26 weeks of benefits most states offer and the federally funded extensions of up to 53 weeks that Congress approved last year and in the stimulus bill enacted in February.



■UNITED STATES

Judge orders smoker to quit

A judge has ordered a 19-year-old Hawaii man who pleaded no contest to starting a restaurant fire with a flicked cigarette to stop smoking for a year. Makaio Bachman-Majamay of Makawao was originally charged with third-degree arson for allegedly igniting the shake roof of the Wei Wei Bar-B-Q Restaurant in Pukalani in July last year. Deputy Public Defender William McGrath says his client didn’t mean to set the fire. Bachman-Majamay pleaded to a reduced charge of third-degree criminal property damage. Second Circuit Judge Joel August ordered him to do community service and pay a US$1,025 fine to fix the roof. He also told the teen not to use tobacco for a year.



■MEXICO

Gunman fit to stand trial

A gunman who opened fire in a crowded Mexico City subway station on Friday night faces double homicide charges. Police say Luis Felipe Hernandez was jailed Sunday on the charges after psychological exams determined he is fit to stand trial. Hernandez, 38, was writing an anti-government statement on a wall at the Balderas station when a police officer confronted him. He fatally shot the officer and then continued firing as people got on and off a train. One commuter was killed and eight others were injured.



■GERMANY

Love handles dangerous

Love handles aren’t just an aesthetic problem, they can also increase the risks of asthma for women, a new medical study found. Women whose waists have a circumference of more than 88cm — even if they are of normal weight — are at risk, the Federal Association of Pneumologists, citing a US study. The study showed that fat buildups along the intestines have a particularly negative impact.



■UNITED STATES

Paterson down but not out

New York Governor David Paterson said on Sunday he was still running for office in the face of reports that President Barack Obama had asked him to withdraw from next year’s race for fear that he cannot regroup from a series of political setbacks. “I am running for office,” Paterson told reporters at a Manhattan parade. “I’m not going to discuss confidential conversations.” The New York Times reported on Sunday that the Obama administration is worried Paterson’s unpopularity could drag down New York’s Democratic members of Congress and the Democratic-controlled state legislature at next year’s elections.



■FRANCE

Man held over bullet threat

Detectives on Sunday detained an unemployed man over threatening letters with bullets sent to President Nicolas Sarkozy and other politicians, a police source said. The man, identified only as Thierry J, is a 51-year-old member of a gun club in the town of Herepian, the source said. He was expected to be transferred soon to Paris.
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