■AUSTRALIA
Fake war hero unmasked
A celebrated war hero who rose to become head of the Prisoner of War Association of Australia was unmasked yesterday as an impostor who didn’t serve in World War II and never saw the inside of a Japanese prison camp. Rex Crane, 83, is now the subject of a police investigation after admitting to the Age newspaper that he spent the war in Adelaide. Crane told the paper he had never enlisted, never worn a uniform and that what he knew about fighting in the jungles of Malaya or the brutality of the Japanese guards at Singapore’s Outram Road Jail he had gleaned from books. “It looks like the past has caught up, doesn’t it?” he said.
■AUSTRALIA
Indonesians repatriated
A group of 62 Indonesians who sailed to the country have been repatriated after being declared economic migrants rather than genuine refugees, news reports said yesterday. “Someone who is seeking better economic opportunities doesn’t meet the criteria for a protection visa,” Immigration Minister Chris Evans said. The men were flown home on Friday from Christmas Island, where they had been detained since their boat was intercepted off the west coast two weeks ago. Evans said the men had “requested removal” when told they did not qualify for protection.
■CHINA
Bus accident kills 17
Brake failure and overcrowding were blamed for a bus accident that killed 17 people and injured 54 in the south, state media said yesterday. The 30-seat bus was carrying 71 people and flipped while descending a hill on Friday morning in Hunan Province’s Qiyang County, an official from the county’s propaganda office said yesterday. Nine people, including the driver, were declared dead at the scene and eight died after being taken to a local hospital, the official said. An initial investigation indicated brake failure and overcrowding caused the bus to overturn, the Xinhua news agency said.
■SINGAPORE
Thief jailed for nine years
A man who pulled off one of the city-state’s largest thefts in recent memory was sentenced on Friday to nine years in jail, local newspapers reported. Jerry Ee, 36, had admitted stealing valuables worth S$8.16 million (US$5.76 million), including 392 designer watches, from his former employer Cortina Watch in the Christmas Day heist last year, the Straits Times said. A stiff punishment was needed as the theft was one of the “most blatant and audacious acts of criminal breach of trust ever committed by an employee,” sentencing judge Chia Wee Kiat was quoted by the newspaper as saying. “The need to curb this proclivity for criminal activities means that the imposition of a deterrent sentence is all the more necessary,” the judge said.
■FRANCE
Life’s a bitch for pets
In a dog-loving country, every president knows the value of man’s best friend. Former president Francois Mitterrand prized his black labrador and President Nicolas Sarkozy once had a chihuahua named Big. But for ex-presidential pets, life after the Elysee can be a bitch. Former president Jacques Chirac’s miniature white maltese, Sumo, has been banished by the former president after becoming so depressed about leaving the presidential palace that he began routinely savaging his master. Although the Chiracs now live in a vast Paris apartment, Sumo has been on antidepressants to deal with the loss of the presidential garden, where he once roamed freely with a golden retriever named Scott.
■UNITED STATES
Man suffers rough week
An 80-year-old Ohio man is recovering from a week in which he was beaten during a home invasion and then shot while trying to learn about guns. Ralph Needs was tied up and pistol-whipped when at least three intruders broke into his Columbus-area home, the Columbus Dispatch reported. His nose was broken and his pickup truck, a computer and credit cards were stolen. Four days later, Needs was shot in the hand during a self-defense lesson when a 9mm pistol went off as one of his sons was loading it.
■SPAIN
Love letters cost US$1.7m
For Cristian Garcia, 22, the split with his girlfriend was devastating. Her love letters to him were proof of a passion that had since died, so he took them to a skip near her home in Valencia, set them on fire and drove off. Three years later Garcia has lost a lot more than his girlfriend. A court this week handed Garcia a suspended prison sentence of 18 months and ordered him to pay 1.2 million euros (US$1.7 million) in damages for the forest fire that he inadvertently started when he burnt the love letters. With winds gusting at 65kph, within hours thousands of hectares were burning forcing evacuations, stopped traffic and a port closure. The fire raged for three days.
■UNITED STATES
Climate pact unlikely to pass
The US president’s top aide on climate change acknowledged that legislation requiring major reductions in global-warming emissions is unlikely to pass Congress before December’s Copenhagen summit on climate change. Carol Browner, director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, said on Friday that completion of the legislative process before the summit “is not going to happen,” the New York Times reported yesterday on its Web site. Drafts proposed in the Senate would cut emissions by between 17 percent and 20 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, and by more than 80 percent by 2050.
■UNITED STATES
Lonely llama captured
A lone llama wandering near the summit of Pikes Peak for a month has been captured and is heading to a new home. Tracy Ducharme and Mike Shealy of Black Forest, Colorado, trekked up the 4,300m mountain on Friday to find the little white beast of burden. They took two llamas with them. The wandering llama’s herd instincts lured him to them and Ducharme slipped a rope around his neck. “I dubbed him Homer because of his little odyssey,” she said.
■MEXICO
Raids net meth chemicals
Two raids by security forces netted the largest seizures of methamphetamine precursor chemicals in the country’s history, federal officials announced on Friday. Agents seized 20 tonnes of chemicals used to produce methamphetamine at Manzanillo port in Colima and 17 tonnes in Nuevo Laredo, the Attorney General’s Office said. Meanwhile, in Ciudad Juarez, police said at least 11 people, including two police officers and a child, were killed in less than 24 hours. Gunmen killed eight on Friday in five separate attacks, including a policewoman who was shot in the head in broad daylight in a residential area, a state prosecutor’s spokesman said. Gunmen opened fire on a pickup truck late on Thursday, killing a 22-year-old woman and a 10-year-old girl playing in a city park. Earlier, a city police officer was killed as she rode on a bus, he said. Also on Friday, a Mexican Air force plane crashed for unknown reasons in Michoacan, killing three soldiers.
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
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