■JAPAN
Nuclear plants emits smoke
Smoke rose yesterday from the world’s biggest nuclear power plant, which was hit by a deadly earthquake two years ago, but the operator said nobody was injured and there was no radiation leak. Kashiwazaki city was rocked by a 6.8-magnitude earthquake in July 2007. The epicenter was just 16km from the plant, where a fire started and a small amount of radiation leaked out. Local residents have voiced fears over the safety of the plant following a string of fires there as well as concerns raised by some geologists that an off-shore tectonic fault line could trigger stronger earthquakes in the future.
■VANUATU
Leaders expels two parties
Prime Minister Edward Natapei has expelled two parties from his coalition government, firing eight ministers and replacing them with members from an opposition party. The prime minister expelled the National United Party and Vanuatu Republican Party from his government late on Tuesday, embracing instead the Opposition Alliance that holds 16 of the 52 seats in the island nation’s parliament.
■INDONESIA
Reporters deported
Officials have deported two foreign journalists covering a Greenpeace demonstration against forest destruction on the western island of Sumatra — bringing to 15 the number of people kicked out of the country over the protest. Kumkum Dasgupta, an editor for the Hindustan Times, and Raimondo Bultrini, an Italian reporter from the L’Espresso weekly newspaper, were questioned for hours after visiting a Greenpeace camp near land owned by PT Riau Andalan Pulp and Paper, one of the biggest paper companies in the country.
■CHINA
Last D-Day veteran dies
The last surviving veteran from the D-Day landings of Allied troops in northern France has died at the age of 91, state media reported on Wednesday. Huang Tingxin (黃廷鑫) died on Nov. 11 in his home in Zhejiang Province, Xinhua news agency said. The cause of his death was not given, but Huang had suffered from Parkinson’s disease in recent years, it said. The former navy veteran, who was trained at Qingdao Naval Academy, served on the British escort carrier HMS Searcher when it took part in the D-Day landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944, it said.
■HONG KONG
Ritual sex trucker charged
A truck driver who convinced a model to have sex with him by claiming it was a ritual that would change her luck, said he had done the same thing with several other women, a court report said yesterday. Au Yeung Kwok-fu, a self-proclaimed Taoist master, told the court he had performed the same ritual with six or seven women to “change their fate” over the last 10 years. The 55-year-old driver appeared in court on Wednesday in the ongoing trial. He has pleaded not guilty to nine counts of unlawful sex by false pretense between April and December 2007, claiming the sex was part of a spiritual ritual. The charges relate to a 19-year-old model who sought help from Au Yeung because she was struggling to get her career off the ground.
■HONG KONG
Chinese ‘Buffett’ accused
A student nicknamed the Chinese Warren Buffett has been accused of blackmailing a Catholic priest with intimate images, a court report said yesterday. Economics student Cheung Ka-wo, 27, appeared in court facing charges of attempting to extort HK$6.3 million (US$813,000) from the priest by threatening to reveal intimate photographs showing their past relationship. Cheung, 27, was nicknamed after the successful US investor Buffett by the local press after he made more than HK$1 million in two days of derivatives trading. He is alleged to have conspired with Dora Kay Li to commit the offenses that occurred in April and May this year, a report in the Hong Kong Standard said.
■CAMBODIA
Use of sirens tightened
Prime Minister Hun Sen has decreed that only he and two other senior politicians may use sirens to clear the streets for their motorcades, local media reported yesterday. In a sub-decree promulgated on Monday, the prime minister specifically banned the country’s 10 deputy prime ministers and other politicians from using sirens to allow easier passage through the capital’s sometimes congested roads. The director of the department for public order at the national police, Him Yan, told the Phnom Penh Post newspaper that the move followed abuses of siren privileges. He said those had caused public disorder and traffic jams in the capital.
■AUSTRALIA
Young sailor passes equator
A schoolgirl bidding to become the youngest solo round-the-world sailor crossed the equator yesterday in what her supporters dubbed a “significant landmark” in her record attempt. Jessica Watson, 16, entered the northern hemisphere just over a month after leaving Sydney in her bright pink 10m yacht Ella’s Pink Lady, and two days ahead of schedule. The teenager was passing through the Kiribati islands and was expected to reach her next major point, Chile’s Cape Horn, in about 36 days, a spokesman said.
■GERMANY
Serial thief finally in jail
After a life of crime stretching back 53 years, a 70-year-old woman was finally behind bars on Wednesday after pickpocketing a woman 10 years her senior in Aschaffenburg, police said. The pensioner, not named by police, first came to the attention of authorities in 1956 and has had 55 criminal cases brought against her, but none resulted in jail time. She was charged 17 times this year alone for petty robberies, including at the nursing home where she lives. “It was especially dangerous when the 70-year-old had to go into hospital for treatment ... Cash, wallets and medical equipment would regularly vanish from other patients’ rooms,” the police said. After the latest incident, prosecutors issued an arrest warrant as the pensioner has two suspended jail sentences of eight and 10 months.
■GERMANY
Orchestra to play at brothel
An orchestra announced plans on Tuesday to play a concert in a brothel to bring classical music “to where people are.” Punters and employees at the Eros Centre in Leipzig will be treated today to six musicians and a singer from the city’s Forum for Contemporary Music performing “licentious and erotic” works. These include Le Flirt by French composer Erik Satie, Seven Erotic Songs by Dirk D’Ase for mezzo-soprano and piano, and Askell Masson’s Rhythm Strip.
■ISRAEL
Air force strikes in Gaza
The air force attacked what the military said was a weapons factory and two smuggling tunnels in the southern Gaza Strip before dawn yesterday. The triple air strike was a response to recent rocket fire from Gaza, a military spokeswoman in Tel Aviv said. She said Gaza militants had fired some 15 rockets and mortar shells over the past month.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Toll bridge to be auctioned
An auction in London next month will offer a tax-free investment with historic charm — a toll bridge over the River Thames. The Swinford toll bridge’s owner can pocket the income — estimated at US$320,000 a year — without paying tax. The bridge has a suggested price of US$2.8 million. It has been privately owned since the 18th century.
■ISRAEL
Woman arrested for shawl
Police arrested a woman at a revered religious site on Wednesday for wearing a prayer shawl, which Orthodox Jewish tradition dictates is only for men. She could face jail. The incident at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s old city highlighted the divisions between liberal streams of Judaism and Orthodox Jews, most of whom eschew any active praying role for women. Nofrat Frankel, 25, a medical student, worshipped at the site alongside 40 other women. She may face charges of performing a religious act that offends others, which carries a maximum six month jail term.
■GERMANY
Spy in trouble over lover
A spy and his male lover, who was allegedly an informer for another country, went on trial in Munich on Wednesday for wrecking a Balkans espionage network. The Federal Intelligence Service agent, who was gathering intelligence in Kosovo, is accused of betraying state secrets to a Macedonian interpreter who became his partner. Prosecutors said the breach blew the covers of 19 “sources” in Kosovo. Prosecutors say the lover was allowed to read classified documents and was an informer for a foreign spy service.
■UNITED STATES
Turkey trots come to end
A wild turkey that has been running wild along the New Jersey Turnpike won’t have to dodge Thanksgiving traffic. State Fish and Wildlife officials netted the bird on Wednesday. The turkey had been trotting around toll booths at an interchange in Jersey City since August. Toll collectors began putting road construction cones on their parked cars to prevent the turkey from jumping onto their vehicles. They named the bird “Tammy the Turnpike Turkey.” Turnpike officials decided to remove the turkey because complaints from drivers intensified. Turnpike spokesman Joe Orlando says the bird will not end up on a Thanksgiving table. It will go to live at a zoo.
■UNITED STATES
US$40,000 left at shrine
A woman left US$40,000 worth of rare coins near a Catholic shrine for safekeeping so the Virgin Mary could watch over her life savings while she was out of town, and apparently it worked: The money was returned to her when she got back a week later. Operators of the National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes near Emmitsburg, Maryland, thought they had been blessed with a big donation when a groundskeeper found two bags filled with gold and silver while raking leaves. But Shrine director William Tronolone said the woman approached him after a Mass on Sunday, six days after the discovery, to ask whether anyone had found some coins she had hidden beneath leaves at the site on the campus of Mount St Mary’s University. “I said, ‘Why did you leave it there?’ And she said, ‘Well, I had to go away and I was afraid to leave it and I wanted the Blessed Mother to watch over it for me — and evidently she did because you found it,’” Tronolone said.
■UNITED STATES
Teens taped thefts
A suburban Philadelphia police chief says two teenagers are being held after officers arrested them and found video recordings they made of themselves burglarizing homes. Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood told reporters on Wednesday that the 15- and 16-year-old boys “terrorized the neighborhood” with their burglaries and added a bizarre twist with the video recordings. Chitwood says in one of the homes they unwrapped Christmas presents. He says they can be heard on the video remarking that Christmas came early for them. Police say they had just set off a burglar alarm when officers caught them on the street with backpacks full of around US$1,000 worth of stolen goods.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Man kills wife ‘in his sleep’
A man killed his wife in his sleep, after dreaming that she was an intruder in their camper van, a court heard on Tuesday. Brian Thomas, who suffers from a sleep disorder, admits killing his wife Christine while they spent a night in a car park in July last year, Swansea Crown court was told. But the 59-year-old is pleading not guilty due to insanity, a lawyer said. The court heard the couple had stopped for the night in a car park, but their sleep was disturbed by young men who gathered there with their cars, revving their engines and screeching their tires. So Thomas decided to move the van to another car park. But the following morning he called police to say he thought he had killed his wife. He said he had been dreaming that he was fighting with the “boy racers” who had disturbed the couple earlier that night. He thought he had put one of them in a headlock, but when he woke up he realized it was his wife.
‘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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in