■SOUTH KOREA
Hot lines being modernized
The government is providing North Korea with optical cables and other equipment to help modernize military hot lines between the two nations, officials in Seoul said yesterday. The hot lines serve as a key mode of direct communication between military officials from the two Koreas. The North cut off six of nine hot lines in May last year, citing technical problems. The hot lines were restored in September, Unification Ministry spokeswoman Lee Jong-joo said. Pyongyang recently asked Seoul to help modernize the hot lines, Lee said. The government will provide Pyongyang with US$1.7 million in equipment and materials next week, she said.
■PHILIPPINES
Eight officials kidnapped
Eight employees of the environment department were kidnapped yesterday, a regional military commander said. The eight were manning an environment checkpoint in a forest area in Butuan City, 810km south of Manila, when seven armed men captured them before dawn, Major General Raymundo Ferrer said. The employees’ pickup truck was also taken.
■AUSTRALIA
Leech snitches on burglar
Blood taken from a leech found at a crime scene was used to catch an armed robber eight years after his crime, in what officials on Tuesday claimed to be a forensic world first. The leech was found beside a safe at the ransacked home of an elderly woman in Tasmania following a 2001 break-in. “It was the only evidence we found, and as there was no evidence of any leech bites from the victim or the police present, we thought it was a good chance to have come from one of the offenders,” Detective Inspector Mick Johnston said. Police took a sample of the blood for DNA profiling, and when the robber was DNA tested over drug offenses late last year, Johnston said they found a match. “It is the oddest way of convicting anyone I have ever been involved in,” Johnston told the Hobart Mercury newspaper. Peter Alec Cannon, 54, pleaded guilty to the robbery and will be sentenced tomorrow in the Launceston Supreme Court. He netted US$500 from the theft.
■INDONESIA
Iranians nabbed with drugs
Ten Iranians, including eight women, have been arrested for allegedly smuggling more than US$10 million in methamphetamine into the country, a customs official said yesterday. The Iranians were arrested after arriving at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, customs chief Anton Mawardi said. “The total value of the illegal drug amounts to 102.064 billion rupiah [US$10.8 million],” Mawardi said. “They turned some of the methampetamine into liquid and put them into shampoo and soap bottles.” The suspects could face up to 10 years in jail.
■CAMBODIA
Demonstration law passed
Parliament passed a controversial law restricting the size of demonstrations yesterday, a measure the opposition said would be used by authorities to stifle free speech. The “peaceful demonstrations law” passed with 76 of the 101 lawmakers in attendance at the National Assembly backing the bill. No opposition lawmakers voted in favor of the bill. The law would restrict the size of protests to 200 people and ban any gathering inside or outside the gates of factories or government buildings. Opposition leader Sam Rainsy said the law was an “excuse to ban people from holding demonstrations” and a move by the ruling Cambodian People’s Party to curb free speech.
■HOLY SEE
Pope welcomes Anglicans
Pope Benedict has approved a document that would make it easier for Anglicans to join the Roman Catholic Church. The move comes after years of discontent in the 70 million-strong worldwide Anglican community about the liberal attitudes of some parts of the Church toward women priests and homosexual bishops. The Vatican said on Tuesday that the document, known as an “apostolic constitution,” would provide a structure for Anglicans who want to join Catholicism, either individually or in groups, while maintaining some of their own traditions. The move was announced at simultaneous news conferences in Rome and London.
■GERMANY
Rancid meat prompts fines
A Bavarian butcher was given a two-year suspended sentence and fined 9,000 euros (US$13,500) on Tuesday for selling rancid meat. The 56-year-old wholesaler confessed that he had delivered old or sub-standard meat on hundreds of occasions to customers in Germany, Austria, Russia and the Netherlands. The court in Deggendorf also extended a ban preventing him from selling meat until the year 2011. The court’s reasons for the judgment included a reference to a comment by the butcher, who said: “The Russians scoff anything anyway.” The man was accused of mixing decaying pork into fresh batches and selling cheap meat in place of the expensive products that customers had ordered. During a raid in 2006, meat was found in the butcher’s cooling units that had sales expiry dates from 2001.
■GERMANY
Dogs find illegal products
A pilot project involving two dogs sniffing out products made from endangered species at Frankfurt airport was so successful it should be implemented Europe-wide, organizers said on Tuesday. Amy and Uno, a German Shepherd and a Labrador, helped customs officials at the airport discover snakeskin handbags, shark fins, a rhino horn, ivory and even a bear skull, the World Wide Fund for Nature said. “The worldwide trade in endangered species is a multi-billion-euro industry, and is the third most lucrative area of business for smugglers after drugs and weapons,” it said. The fund came up with the concept for the project together with fellow environmental group TRAFFIC.
■ISRAEL
Missile defenses tested
Israel and the US launched a major air defense drill yesterday as part of what Israeli public radio called preparation for a face-off with Iran. During the two-week maneuvers, dubbed “Juniper Cobra,” some 1,000 US personnel will mesh ground and ship-based missile interceptors like the AEGIS, THAAD and Patriot with Israel’s Arrow II ballistic shield, defense officials said. Spokesmen on both sides said the biennial drill was unrelated to world events, but Israel Radio quoted an unnamed commander as saying it served “to prepare for a nuclear Iran.”
■UNITED STATES
Alien costume draws ire
Immigrant advocates are urging retailers to pull a Halloween costume of a space creature in orange prison garb emblazoned with the words “illegal alien,” while a group that supports strict immigration laws says such a move violates freedom of speech. Since Friday, when a Los Angeles-based immigrant group raised the issue, companies including Target, Walgreens and eBay have removed the costume from their inventory. Still, many local retailers continue to stock the costume, which also comes with a “green card.”
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of