■AUSTRALIA
Rapper fined for spitting
British rapper Lady Sovereign was fined A$400 (US$348) in a court yesterday after pleading guilty to spitting in a nightclub bouncer’s face. The 23-year-old, whose real name is Louise Harman, had only been in the country seven hours when she got into a fight in the bathroom of a Brisbane city nightclub in the early hours of yesterday morning, AAP newswire said. Harman was “hysterical” as she was turfed from The Beat club by bouncers and “emotions got away on her,” police told Brisbane Magistrates Court. Magistrate Brendan Butler said spitting had “serious health implications” and fined her A$400, A$200 of which he directed she pay to the bouncer as compensation. He did not record a conviction.
■AUSTRALIA
Teen urged to drop trip
The authorities yesterday urged a teenager to abandon her bid to become the youngest solo round-the-world sailor, after investigators blamed her for a collision with a cargo ship. Jessica Watson, 16, was less than 24 hours into a test sail between Queensland state and Sydney when she hit a 63,000-tonne freighter in a busy shipping lane on Sept. 9. Her pink yacht’s mast was snapped and its rigging and hull damaged, but Watson vowed the accident would not stop her bid to become the youngest person to sail non-stop around the world, solo and unassisted.
■AUSTRALIA
Town bans bottled water
A town pulled all bottled water from its shelves yesterday and replaced it with refillable bottles in what is believed to be a world-first ban. Hundreds of people marched through the picturesque rural town of Bundanoon to mark the first day of its bottled water ban by unveiling a series of new public drinking fountains, campaign spokesman John Dee said. Shopkeepers ceremoniously removed the last bottles of water from their shelves and replaced them with reusable bottles that can be filled from fountains inside the town’s shops or at water stations in the street. “Every bottle today was taken off shelf and out of the fridges so you can only now buy refillable bottles in shops in Bundanoon,” Dee said.
■VIETNAM
Tour boat sinks, three killed
A boat carrying foreign tourists sank in the popular scenic destination of Halong Bay, killing three, while extreme weather elsewhere left six dead, disaster officials said yesterday. The boat sank in heavy winds on Thursday evening as it was returning to port with 25 tourists and a crew of seven, disaster official Doan Van That said. Two foreigners and a Vietnamese drowned and another Vietnamese national remains missing. The other passengers were saved by the crews of other boats cruising Halong Bay, a world heritage site famous for dramatic limestone peaks that jut from its waters.
■VIETNAM
S Korean sentenced to death
A Hanoi appeals court has sentenced a South Korean man to death for strangling his Vietnamese teacher, stuffing her in a suitcase and setting her corpse on fire. State media reported yesterday that the court issued the death sentence after the woman’s family complained that a life sentence issued by a lower court was too lenient. A Hanoi court sentenced Kim Ki-jong, 25, in January to life in prison for killing Dao Thi Hue, 21. Officials at the court and South Korean embassy were not available for comment yesterday.
■RUSSIA
Defamation trial starts
The head of Russian rights group Memorial insisted on Friday that the strongman leader of Chechnya was responsible for the murder of activist Natalya Estemirova, as he went on trial for defamation. Soon after the leading Memorial activist was killed in July, rights group chief Oleg Orlov publicly blamed pro-Kremlin Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov for the killing. Kadyrov sued Memorial for defamation. Orlov denied he had accused Kadyrov of participating in the murder — but he still considered the leader of guilty of Estemirova’s death. “I never spoke of participation, I spoke of guilt ... I do not use the word ‘guilty’ in a criminal sense but in a social and political sense,” Orlov told a Moscow court.
■UNITED NATIONS
Madagascar leader stopped
African nations blocked Madagascar President Andry Rajoelina from addressing the UN General Assembly on Friday, saying his rise to power through a military coup made him illegitimate. The Democratic Republic of Congo, speaking on behalf of the 15-member Southern African Development Community, said Rajoelina should be barred, a motion later carried by a vote on the assembly floor. The president of the assembly, Libya’s Ali Triki, said the UN legal counsel had ruled that Rajoelina should be allowed to participate and then called for a vote that quickly led to confusion. “I’m not sure what we just voted for. I’m totally confused,” one delegate said after the circuitously worded motion was put the floor. With most nations abstaining, the Africans marshaled 23 votes against Rajoelina versus four in support and he was prevented from taking the podium.
■ISRAEL
Airstrike kills Palestinians
Three Palestinians were killed late on Friday in an Israeli airstrike on their car as they drove in an eastern district of Gaza City, witnesses and hospital officials said. Witnesses said they heard a sudden explosion and then saw flames and smoke come from the targeted car. Gaza emergency chief Mo’aweya Hassanein told reporters that local ambulances and rescue teams brought the three victims’ bodies to Shiffa Hospital in Gaza City. The three were members of radical Islamic Jihad armed wing Saraya al-Quds, the group said in a statement.
■ITALY
Police probe tax cheats
Authorities said on Friday they had traced nearly 4 billion euros (US$5.9 billion) in assets sent abroad illegally by rich Italians to avoid tax. The inquiry has already uncovered famous athletes and business chiefs as tax cheats following 1,000 out of a planned 5,000 checks this year. The government has stepped up fraud checks since a tax amnesty came into force last week, allowing Italians to repatriate or declare assets sent abroad on condition that they pay a fine of 5 percent. The amnesty does not apply to those under investigation for fraud.
■BOSNIA
Bardot urges bears’ rescue
French film legend Brigitte Bardot on Friday asked the Bosnian government to grant her a birthday wish by helping rescue two endangered bears held in captivity in the Balkan country. Bardot, who will celebrate her 75th birthday tomorrow, wants the bears to be transported to a shelter in Germany. “We ask for your help to obtain authorizations necessary to transport these bears to a shelter that could accept them,” Bardot said in a letter to Agriculture Minister Damir Ljubic.
■COLOMBIA
Two mass graves found
The chief prosecutor’s office said on Friday it has unearthed the remains of 17 peasants tortured and killed at a ranch that belonged to the since-slain, far-right militia leader Carlos Castano in the northwest. In the southern jungles, meanwhile, the military said it had discovered a mass grave holding 16 rebels believed killed in combat, including a nephew of a top guerrilla commander, Jorge Briceno. The peasants were believed slain 10 to 12 years ago by men under the command of Jesus Ignacio Roldan, alias “Monoleche,” Castano’s lieutenant. Nibaldo Jimenez, exhumations coordinator in the prosecutor’s office for victims of the right-wing paramilitaries, said his unit has unearthed the remains of 2,570 people since the militias began demobilizing in 2005 under a peace pact with the government.
■CANADA
Woman leaps from cruise
Police believe an elderly US woman who disappeared from an Alaskan cruise off the coast of British Columbia jumped from the ship and drowned. Bella Bella Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sergeant Nelson Salter said on Friday that Edelgard Carney, 67, of Sutter Creek, California, was suffering from an undisclosed medical condition and had wrapped up some of her personal affairs back home before going on the cruise. He says video surveillance from the Princess Cruise ship Sapphire Princess shows Carney jumping from the ship on Tuesday and it appeared to be a suicide.
■MEXICO
Five arrested over killings
Police have arrested five men accused of dozens of murders, including two mass killings at drug treatment centers in Ciudad Juarez. Police say the men were members of the Sinaloa cartel, a violent gang entrenched in a brutal turf war for control of drug routes to the US. The men are accused of 45 different executions. Police said the arrests solve two high-profile attacks that shocked even this violence-plagued city. On Sept. 2, gunmen lined patients against a wall at a rehabilitation center and riddled them with bullets, killing 18. Two weeks later, gunmen burst into another drug treatment center and killed 10 people. Police said with Friday’s arrests, officials have accounted for 292 of the 1,720 murders in Ciudad Juarez so far this year.
■BRAZIL
US journalist sued
A freelance US journalist who was on a business jet involved in a mid-air collision with a Brazilian airliner three years ago said Friday that he has been sued for defamation in Brazil. Joe Sharkey was a passenger on the business jet that collided at 11,280m on Sep. 29, 2006, with a Boeing 737, killing all 154 people aboard the Brazilian airliner. Sharkey and the six other people aboard the business jet survived after making an emergency landing in the jungle. He said the lawsuit, filed by the widow of one of the accident’s vicitms, involves comments in his articles and on his blog and is based on a law that allows any citizen to claim damages for an alleged insult to the dignity or honor of Brazil.
■UNITED STATES
O’Brien injures head
NBC says Conan O’Brien hit his head during a stunt for the Tonight Show and the production was halted. The accident occurred on Friday. O’Brien was being examined at a hospital, according to a person close to the production. Through an NBC statement, O’Brien joked that he recalled “enjoying the play with Mrs Lincoln,” and the next thing he was aware of was being served cookies and juice.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema