■JAPAN
Court rejects cult appeals
A court rejected on Friday the final appeals of two senior members of the doomsday cult behind the deadly 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, effectively putting them on death row. Yukio Takeuchi, the Supreme Court’s presiding judge, rejected pleas by Toru Toyoda, 41, and Kenichi Hirose, 45, upholding previous verdicts by two lower courts that handed both the death sentence, Jiji Press reported. The two men were accused of colluding with Aum Supreme Truth sect leader Shoko Asahara to orchestrate the nerve gas attack, which killed 12 people and injured thousands.
■AUSTRALIA
Floods cause disaster
Authorities declared a natural disaster along parts of the country’s east coast yesterday as heavy floods cut the main road linking major cities, stranding thousands of people. Torrential rain soaked the Coffs Harbour region north of Sydney overnight, swamping the arterial Pacific Highway with flash floodwaters that isolated almost 5,000 people, emergency officials said. About 40 people had to be evacuated and New South Wales emergency services minister Steve Whan declared a natural disaster, releasing state funds.
■VIETNAM
Dissident unable to walk
One of nine dissidents sentenced to prison early last month remains on hunger strike and may be near death, his wife said after visiting him on Friday. Vu Van Hung, a 43-year-old high school teacher, was sentenced to three years in prison and three years of probation on Oct. 7 for hanging a banner advocating multiparty democracy from a Hanoi overpass in August last year. Mai said Hung had not eaten and had drunk nothing but water since his conviction and had lost 30kg. Hung is demanding that an appeals court reverse its verdict.
■MYANMAR
Prisoner faces 17-year term
A Myanmar-born American jailed for allegedly plotting unrest but charged with fraud now faces a new offense that could bring his total prison sentence to 17 years, his lawyer said yesterday. Kyaw Zaw Lwin was charged on Friday during his trial at Insein Prison with violating the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, which carries a three-year prison sentence, lawyer Nyan Win said. Lawyers were not told why the new charge was added or given details of how their client allegedly violated the Act, which bars Myanmar nationals from holding foreign currency without a license.
■CHINA
Mushrooms returned
An academic persecuted during the Cultural Revolution for smuggling a rare collection of mushrooms out of China before World War II was honored yesterday when the collection was returned more than 70 years later. At a ceremony at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Cornell University President David Skorton handed over the collection that had been gathered by Shu Chun Teng (鄧叔群). Teng studied mycology at Cornell in the 1920s, then spent the next decade gathering samples in China. During the Japanese invasion in 1937, Teng arranged for his best specimens to be removed from a national botany institute. During World War II, they were smuggled to the US, and 2,278 of the specimen packets ended up at Teng’s alma mater. But that action meant Teng became a target during the devastating 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution. Discharged from his lab, he was subjected to daily beatings and mental prosecution and died in 1970 at age 67.
■SWITZERLAND
Baguette foils scientists
Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider found their plans to emulate the big bang postponed this week when a bird dropped a “bit of baguette” into the machine, causing it to overheat. CERN, the European particle physics lab, launched the collider on Sept. 10 last year. Tests on Monday were stopped after the power supply to the collider was cut. Scientists headed above ground to investigate and “discovered bread and a bird eating the bread” at one of the points where the electricity supply enters the collider. The incident shut the collider for three days.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Butcher’s pen causes fuss
A butcher who received a medal from Queen Elizabeth II kept his trusty pen tucked behind his ear throughout the ceremony, newspapers reported yesterday. William Lloyd Williams, 49, went to Buckingham Palace in London to receive his Member of the Order of the British Empire medal for services to the meat industry. The butcher shed his hat for the ceremony but couldn’t bear to be without a ballpoint pen. “It’s a trait with butchers,” he told the BBC. He said more than 30 guests waiting to collect awards came over to tell him he had a pen behind his ear. “I said the queen might want a turkey so I’ll need to know what size she wants,” he said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Sex broadcast in station
London commuters listening for the latest news on train services got a broadcast of a different nature when the noise of a couple apparently having sex was blasted out over a station’s loudspeaker system. Instead of the usual messages about delays, passengers at West Ham station heard sex relayed over platform loudspeakers on Thursday evening. The public address system works on radio waves and someone may have been broadcasting on the same wavelength. “It was definitely a couple doing it,” passenger Laura O’Connor told the London Evening Standard. “He was grunting loudly and she sounded like she was having a great time.”
■SWITZERLAND
Swine flu deaths hit 6,000
The number of swine flu deaths has grown by more than 370 over a week to pass 6,000, as the pandemic spread into more than 199 countries and territories, WHO data showed on Friday. The Americas account for nearly three quarters of the global toll, with 4,399 deaths, an increase of 224 in a week.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Miss England steps down
Miss England Rachel Christie stepped down on Friday to clear her name following an alleged punch-up in a nightclub with a rival beauty queen. Christie is alleged to have attacked Miss Manchester in a row over a beefy TV personality called Tornado. Christie has been arrested on suspicion of assault. Christie, 21, is an athlete who specializes in the heptathlon and the 400m and hopes to qualify for the 2012 London Olympic Games. Sara Beverley Jones, 24, was allegedly punched in the face after arguing about Tornado, who appears in the Gladiators combat program.
■AUSTRIA
Songs annoy shop workers
Retail workers face added stress from Christmas songs blaring in shops, their union said on Friday, and urged employers to keep the music down. With pressure building up as business becomes hectic, many shop workers have complained of excessive exposure to the same few Christmas songs year after year, employees’ union GPA-djp said.
■UNITED STATES
Drunk driving caller arrested
Oregon police have charged a man with drunk driving after he called police to report his marijuana as stolen. Calvin Hoover, 21, told dispatchers early on Tuesday someone had broken into his truck and stolen cash, a jacket and a small amount of marijuana while he was at a tavern. He called police again to complain they had not arrived, but the dispatcher had trouble understanding Hoover because he was driving and stopping occasionally to vomit, the Statesman Journal reported. He was arrested on charges of driving under the influence.
■CANADA
Salmon inquiry launched
The government launched a judicial inquiry on Friday into why millions of Pacific salmon failed to reach Canadian rivers some months ago, in a bid to salvage the stocks. Bruce Cohen, a justice on British Columbia’s Supreme Court, was appointed commissioner by International Trade Minister Stockwell Day for the inquiry into the decline of sockeye salmon in the Fraser River. The report due by May 1. Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans had projected that between 6 million and 10 million sockeye salmon would return to the Fraser River in a peak August run. Only a fraction showed up and where the others went remains a mystery. “It is very big news because I do not know of any government anywhere in the world that appointed a judicial inquiry to look at its government’s management of the fishery,” said Phil Eidsvik, spokesman for the British Columbia Fisheries Survival Coalition. The inquiry may help prevent the industry from going the way of Atlantic cod, whose stocks collapsed in the early 1990s following over-fishing, Eidsvik said
■UNITED NATIONS
Peacekeepers punished
Some 33 UN peacekeepers have been punished for sexual exploitation and abuse this year, up significantly from only two who were chastised last year, the UN said on Friday. The disgraced peacekeepers have been handed punishments by their national authorities including dismissal, imprisonment and reduction in rank, a statement issued by the UN said.
■UNITED STATES
‘Gordo’ found guilty
A Guatemalan man said by the US government to have been one of the world’s biggest cocaine dealers was found guilty on Friday of conspiracy to import and sell the narcotic, prosecutors in New York said. Jorge Mario Paredes-Cordova, “one of the world’s most significant drug kingpins, was found guilty of conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine,” the US Attorney’s office in Manhattan said. Paredes, said to weigh 150kg and nicknamed “Gordo” (Fat One), was extradited to the US after his capture in may last year in Honduras.
■UNITED STATES
Car stolen for court date
The California Highway Patrol say a man stole a car to make a court appearance on a previous auto theft charge. Patrol investigator Chris Linehan says he arrested Samuel Botchvaroff, 24, on Tuesday as he sat inside a stolen 2000 Range Rover at the Vallejo courthouse. He had just left his arraignment on auto theft charges stemming from an Oct. 31 arrest. Linehan said the Range Rover’s LoJack system helped him locate the vehicle, which had been stolen from Oakland on Tuesday morning. Authorities say Botchvaroff told officers his car had been impounded, and he had no other way to get to his arraignment.
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
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing