■JAPAN
Toddler survives train hit
A toddler who strayed onto rail tracks got away with scratches on Monday after a train ground to a halt on top of her, police and rescuers said. The driver spotted the girl standing on the tracks in Suzaka City, northwest of Tokyo, and applied the emergency brakes, local police said. The train stopped with the girl beneath, they said. She was alive and trapped in the 50cm gap between the train and the tracks, rescuers said. “It could have been a tragedy. It’s a miracle that she survived this way,” a rescue worker told the TV Asahi network.
■AUSTRALIA
Cat shot, walks home
A cat named Smokey survived 13 shots to the head from an air rifle and then found his way home after what police yesterday called a “shocking” act of animal cruelty. The nine-year-old moggy turned up on his owners’ doorstep bleeding from his head last week, three days after he went missing from the family home in Maryborough, Victoria. A medical examination revealed 13 pellets lodged in his head and face. Sergeant Craig Pearse said it was remarkable Smokey had managed to get home after his ordeal. “This is just a shocking incident where someone either working alone or in a group has shown no regard for animal life and left Smokey for dead,” Pearse said.
■VIETNAM
Baby-selling trial opens
A court in the north has put 16 people on trial for allegedly selling more than 250 babies for foreign adoption, a court official said yesterday. The head of two social welfare centers in Nam Dinh Province as well as several doctors and nurses at village clinics went on trial yesterday, said Dang Viet Hung, the chief judge at the court hearing the case. The defendants are charged with “abuse of power and authority” and could face prison terms of five to 10 years. The defendants allegedly solicited infants from unwed mothers and those from desperately poor families and falsified documents claiming the babies had been abandoned at village clinics, making them eligible for adoption, Hung said.
■CHINA
Five jailed in plate fight
Five men have been jailed in Beijing for up to 16 months for fighting over a “lucky license plate” containing the number eight, a traditional number for good fortune, state media said yesterday. The men allegedly armed themselves with knives and clubs and beat anyone who came near a machine issuing new license plate numbers at a Beijing vehicle registration center, the Beijing News reported. Several people were injured, one of them seriously. The incident occurred in July last year as plates with “8888” as the last four digits were about to be issued, the report said. The ringleader had lined up four cars for new plates and paid his four accomplices a total of 10,000 yuan (US$1,400) to guard the machine and ensure he got the numbers he wanted, it said.
■SOUTH KOREA
New fingerprinting rules
All adult foreign visitors visiting the country will by 2012 have to be fingerprinted to tighten immigration controls and prevent criminals entering the country, officials said yesterday. The justice ministry said a bill to be submitted to parliament next month requires foreigners aged over 17 to provide prints of their index fingers and an identity photograph upon entry. Those intending to stay more than three months must provide full fingerprints in addition to the photo.
■ISRAEL
Arab Israeli killed: army
Israeli soldiers killed an Arab Israeli man yesterday after he allegedly refused to undergo security checks at a roadblock in the occupied West Bank, the army said. The man stopped at the Beitar roadblock west of Bethlehem, but when the soldiers manning it wanted to search his car, he refused, an army spokeswoman said. “He arrived at the checkpoint, handed over his ID,” the spokeswoman said. “He wouldn’t undergo the required security checks and he drove off away from the checkpoint.” The soldiers began a search for the car and “spotted him at a nearby gas station. They tried to get him out of the car and that’s when he accelerated toward the soldiers,” she said. The troops “fired at first in the air and his tires and when that didn’t stop him, they fired toward him,” she said. “The incident is still under investigation,” she said.
■SIERRA LEONE
Preggies at death risk: AI
One in eight women in the country risk death during childbirth or pregnancy and the government must act to improve maternal health care, rights group Amnesty International (AI) said yesterday. “Women and girls are dying in their thousands because they are routinely denied their right to life and health, in spite of promises from the government to provide free healthcare to all pregnant women,” it said. AI said the one-in-eight number was “one of the highest maternal death rates in the world.” “Thousands of women bleed to death after giving birth,” AI said in a statement. “Most die in their homes. Some die on the way to hospital, in taxis, on motorbikes or on foot.” It added that “less than half of deliveries are attended by a skilled birth attendant and less than one in five are carried out in health facilities.”
■RUSSIA
‘Anti-Soviet’ not allowed
A Moscow restaurant called ‘Anti-Soviet’ has changed its name under pressure from local authorities who said it offended the nation’s older generation, the manager said on Monday. Anti-Sovetskaya, which opened in July, was renamed Sovetskaya (Soviet) on Friday. “They said it insulted the feelings of veterans,” Alexander Vanin said, adding that local authorities had threatened to fine the kebab-serving restaurant over its name. Local media reports said Oleg Mitvol, a Moscow city prefect and former ecology official known for his high-profile attacks on Western energy firms, had taken exception to the name of the restaurant. “Such names are insulting to the history of our country,” he was quoted as saying.
■IRELAND
Postcodes coming, at last
The government plans to assign postcodes to each address in about a year’s time, becoming the last European country to do so, in the hope of giving western Europe’s worst performing economy a small boost. The once-booming “Celtic Tiger” has been seeking ways to improve competitiveness and stop multinationals moving more production to lower cost centers such as eastern Europe. “We’re the only country in Europe which doesn’t have a postal code ... and we like that in a nostalgic way,” Communications Minister Eamon Ryan said. “But the reality is it’s not efficient and it doesn’t work well,” Ryan told public radio RTE on Monday. “We need to move to a new digital economy, postcodes are part of that.” Proponents say postcodes would not only make mail delivery more efficient, but would also help other businesses that rely on the exact tracing of goods in the export-reliant Irish economy.
■UNITED STATES
Guns, not yoga on peace day
It may take more than a few deep breaths to bring peace back to the New England town of Raymond, New Hampshire. About 40 protesters, including some carrying guns, showed up at the town common on Sunday after the town refused to allow Molly Schlangen to hold a “yoga for peace” gathering in honor of the International Day of Peace. Selectmen said on Monday that they rejected Schlangen’s request because they didn’t have enough information about her plans. Schlangen held the event at her studio instead. The guns belonged to members of the Free State Project, who were promoting constitutional rights to assemble and own guns.
■IRAQ
Zaidi proposes Bush trial
The journalist who was jailed for throwing his shoes at former US president George W. Bush said he wants to move to Switzerland and rally Iraqis to take Bush to court. Muntazer al-Zaidi told TSR television in an interview broadcast on Monday that he was beaten with metal bars, tortured with electric cables and endured simulated drowning during his detention. His employer, Al-Baghdadia TV station, and a family member have said that Zaidi had left Iraq for Syria and would travel on to Greece for medical treatment. Zaidi told TSR that he wants to launch a “vast operation” to rally Iraqi families in order to lodge a legal complaint against Bush. Bush and his collaborators should face trial in an international tribunal for “war crimes committed during the occupation of Iraq,” he said.
■UNITED STATES
Alleged plotters reject trial
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and two suspected fellow plotters on Monday refused to attend a Guantanamo Bay military court hearing. Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali had been due in court after filing a motion to fire their lawyers. The three refused to leave their cells. Military judge Stephen Henley turned down a request from government prosecutors to force them to attend. An hour before the hearing was due to start, Henley approved a demand from President Barack Obama’s administration to delay the main proceedings for another 60 days while the government decides how to try them.
■UNITED STATES
Pianist Ferrante dies at 88
Pianist Art Ferrante, who teamed with Lou Teicher to record a series of 1960s easy-listening hits based on movie theme songs, has died, aged 88. The duo’s longtime manager, Scott Smith, said on Monday Ferrante died on Saturday of natural causes in Longboat Key, about 100km south of Tampa, Florida. Along with Teicher, Ferrante recorded versions of themes from movies including Exodus, The Apartment, Lawrence of Arabia, Cleopatra and Midnight Cowboy. Ferrante and Teicher, known as “The Movie Theme Team,” performed together for 40 years after meeting as children at the Juilliard School in New York. Smith said Ferrante played the piano every day, “until about four weeks ago.”
■UNITED STATES
Woman kept body for cash
A Florida woman was sentenced on Monday to a year and a day in prison for keeping her dead mother’s body in a bedroom for years while collecting more than US$230,000 in pension benefits, prosecutors said. Penelope Sharon Jordan, 61, of Sebastian, Florida, pleaded guilty to theft of government funds in June, the US Attorney’s Office in Miami said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At 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
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