■AUSTRALIA
Third oil plug fails
A Thai-based oil company yesterday failed in its third attempt to plug a leaking rig that has spilled thousands of barrels of crude into seas off Australia, alarming environmentalists. PTTEP Australasia said it had missed its target for a relief well some 2.6km below the seabed for the third time this month, and would try again in the coming days. The leaking wellhead, some 25cm wide, has been gushing off Australia’s Northwest since Aug. 21 with estimates putting the discharge at 400 barrels a day. The spill is reportedly Australia’s worst since offshore drilling began more than 40 years ago. Environment Minister Peter Garrett, the former frontman of rock band Midnight Oil, this week said PTTEP had agreed to pay for environmental monitoring of the area for at least two years.
■VIETNAM
Two frozen tigers seized
Authorities have seized two frozen tigers in the country where only a few dozen of the animals remain in the wild, state-linked media said yesterday. The tigers, weighing 40kg and 90kg, were discovered on Friday in a suburban district of Hanoi, the Thanh Nien newspaper said. At least four people, including the driver of a taxi transporting the animals, have been arrested pending investigations, the paper said. Police and forest rangers in Hanoi were not available for comment yesterday. The Tuoi Tre newspaper said one of the accused told police they bought the tigers south of Hanoi in Thanh Hoa Province and were bringing them to the capital for sale at the price of 2 million dong (US$111) per kilogram. There have been at least three similar seizures in Hanoi this year.
■AUSTRALIA
Baby survives train strike
A six-month-old baby has miraculously survived a train hitting his stroller, which rolled onto the tracks when his mother let go for an instant. The escape was captured on security camera footage that shows the red, three-wheeled stroller plunging off a station platform just as the commuter train pulls in, and the mother’s panicked lunge to grab it. The train pushed the stroller about 40m along the tracks before it stopped, but it did not go under the train. The baby, who was strapped into the stroller, received only a bump on the head. Police said they released the video, which was captured last Thursday at a suburban station in the southern city of Melbourne, to underscore the need for people to be extra safety conscious when using the train system. The dramatic footage led news bulletins across Australia and was shown internationally, and on YouTube. The whole incident took about seven seconds.
■INDIA
Fireworks blaze kills 32
A blaze erupted at a fireworks warehouse, killing at least 32 people and injuring 10 others ahead of a major Hindu festival yesterday. The victims in Friday night’s explosion were mainly traders buying fireworks in bulk as millions of Hindus prepared to celebrate Deepavali, the festival of lights, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. Setting off fireworks is a major part of the celebration’s evening festivities. Police pulled 32 bodies, most of them charred remains, from the warehouse in Pallipat near Chennai, the capital of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, PTI quoted local administrator Palani Kumar as saying. Three people have been hospitalized with burns, Kumar said. The cause of the fire was not immediately known.
■UNITED STATES
Jailer catches tennis balls
A New Orleans jailer has called game, set and match on six people who tossed drug-filled tennis balls into his prison yard. Sheriff Marlin Gusman had netting strung up around the recreation yard walls a couple years back to ward off smugglers. But the tennis balls — which can be hollowed out to hold illegal cellphones, weapons and drugs — kept coming. “They have all the time in the world to think about how to do things,” Gusman said on Friday. “Our job is to stay one step ahead of them.” So he set up an undercover operation that netted the six civilians and seven inmates captured orchestrating the scheme. They were booked on Thursday on various charges of introducing marijuana and illegal cellphones into a prison.
■UNITED STATES
Artist admits Obama mistake
Artist Shepard Fairey, who designed the famous Obama HOPE poster, said he was mistaken about which Associated Press photo he based his work on and that he tried to hide his wrongdoing. “In an attempt to conceal my mistake I submitted false images and deleted other images,” said Fairey, who has been involved in countersuits with the AP, which has alleged copyright infringement. Attorneys for Fairey told the AP they have withdrawn and, in papers filed on Friday in federal court in Manhattan, stated that he misled them.
■UNITED STATES
Body ignored for week
Residents of a Southern California apartment complex say they saw a lifeless body slumped on a neighbor’s patio, but didn’t call police because they thought it was part of a Halloween display. Mostafa Mahmoud Zayed had apparently been dead since Monday. Cameraman Austin Raishbrook, owner of RMG News, told the Los Angeles Times he was at the scene in Marina del Rey on Thursday when authorities arrived. The 75-year-old Zayed was slumped over a chair on the third-floor balcony of his apartment with a single gunshot wound to the eye. A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department investigator said the case was an “apparent suicide.” Raishbrook said neighbors told him they noticed the body on Monday.
■UNITED STATES
Jackson’s ex-wife sues
Michael Jackson’s ex-wife Deborah Rowe said a Florida woman should be found liable for nearly US$500,000 in damages for statements she made in a TV interview. Rowe sued Rebecca White in July for her comments to the TV show Extra claiming Rowe didn’t want custody of her two children with Jackson, but was only interested in getting money from his family. Rowe, the mother of Jackson’s two oldest children, reached an agreement with the singer’s mother on custody in August. She has some visitation rights and no money is said to have changed hands for the arrangement.
■UNITED STATES
Jazz city mayor visits Cuba
The mayor of New Orleans flew to Cuba on Friday on a mission to study the island’s respected disaster preparedness methods in another sign of easing diplomatic relations. The visit comes a day after President Barack Obama promised New Orleans that the government would never repeat the “failure of government” seen after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the jazz city in 2005. Ray Nagin is the first US mayor to make a diplomatic visit to Cuba in 50 years, his office said. The State Department gave approval to the mission because Cuba has been recognized internationally as a leader in emergency management, Quiett said.
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
‘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
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