■NEW ZEALAND
Billboard sparks ire
A church billboard showing an apparently naked Virgin Mary and Joseph in bed together has sparked the ire of conservative Christians. On the poster a sad-looking Joseph lies next to Mary, whose face is turned heavenwards under the words: “Poor Joseph. God was a hard act to follow.” The billboard was erected outside the progressive St Matthew-in-the-City Anglican church in Auckland yesterday. St Matthews’ vicar, Archdeacon Glynn Cardy, said the billboard was meant to challenge stereotypes about the way Jesus was conceived and literal interpretations of the Bible. One protester was so incensed that just hours after the poster was unveiled, he climbed on top of his car and covered the images with brown paint.
■MALAYSIA
Branson makes bet
British billionaire Richard Branson might be serving coffee on budget carrier AirAsia — wearing a female flight attendant’s uniform — following a friendly bet over Formula One racing. Branson and AirAsia’s boss, Tony Fernandes, are both spearheading new F1 teams for next year’s season. Branson suggested this week that if Fernandes’ team finishes behind his, the Malaysian could “come and work on our airline as a Virgin stewardess,” and he would do the same for Air Asia if his team lost. “Our guests will be delighted to be served by a Knight of the Realm, but knowing Richard, the real challenge will be to prevent him from asking our guests, ‘coffee, tea or me?’” Fernandes said yesterday.
■MALAYSIA
Witchcraft law demanded
Muslim clerics want laws to ban witchcraft to help stem a tide of robberies, the New Straits Times reported yesterday. Witchcraft is forbidden in Islam, but there are currently no civil or Shariah laws that clearly prohibit it. Reports of the use of so-called black magic are widespread, with robbers said to use spells to ensure a successful heist. “Criminals were said to have tapped a victim’s back or blow cigarette smoke on a victim’s face to cast spells, making them unaware they are being robbed,” Muslim cleric Haron Din was quoted as saying at a seminar on “Love Magic and Diagnosis Methodology.”
■AUSTRALIA
Wildfires engulf home
Firefighters battled nearly 100 blazes yesterday that engulfed at least one home and put several others under threat. More than 200 firefighters using 50 firetrucks and five aircraft fought one of the fiercest infernos at Londonderry near Sydney. Emergency warnings were sent out by text message and landline urging residents near Gerogery in New South Wales state to flee their homes if they could.
■PHILIPPINES
One escapee recaptured
Government forces captured an al-Qaeda-linked militant who had escaped from jail and dropped thousands of leaflets yesterday offering rewards to villagers for helping catch 28 other fugitives. About 2,000 marines, army troops and police have fanned out to hunt down the detainees who escaped from the Basilan provincial jail as it came under attack on Sunday by suspected Muslim guerrillas. A guard was killed during the jailbreak, police said. One inmate was killed and another was recaptured.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Beard burners jailed
A court jailed two young men on Wednesday for setting fire to a stranger’s beard as he slept on a train. The judge condemned the “cowardly and callous actions” by Dean Hardy, 20, and Aedan Palmer, 19, in the attack last December that left 22-year-old Luke Kennedy with severe burns to his lips, ears and cheeks. During the trial, the court had heard that Hardy and Palmer had each drunk about 10 cans of beer before they boarded the train.
■SOUTH AFRICA
AIDS denier dies
Former health minister Mantombazane Tshabalala-Msimang, whose AIDS policies drew international opprobrium, died on Wednesday after a long battle with liver disease. Doctors said the 69-year-old had died at Wits University medical center in Johannesburg as a result of complications from a 2007 liver transplant. In more than eight years as minister, she shot to international prominence for defying scientific evidence of the causes and treatment of AIDS and stalling the roll-out of desperately needed anti-retroviral drugs as the country became the worst-affected country in the worldwide fight against AIDS.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Stormtrooper wins battle
This wasn’t the judgment he was looking for. A court on Wednesday rejected an attempt by George Lucas’ film empire to collect damages from the prop designer who sold replicas of the Stormtrooper uniforms from the Star Wars movies. Lucasfilm Ltd has been locked in a long-running legal battle with designer Andrew Ainsworth over the replica suits and helmets he sold through a Web site. Ainsworth sculpted the Stormtrooper helmets for the first Star Wars movie in 1977 and later sold reproductions of the molded white uniforms, worn in the films by warriors of the evil Galactic Empire.
■POLAND
Auschwitz donation made
Germany has donated 60 million euros (US$88 million) to a global fund that aims to preserve the site of the Nazi German Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland, authorities said on Wednesday. In a statement, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum said that the money represented half the total it needs to ensure the future of the World War II site as a permanent memorial to the Nazis’ victims. Auschwitz survivor Wladyslaw Bartoszewski — a former foreign minister who is considered a moral authority in his country and set up the foundation — hailed Germany’s sense of “responsibility with regard to history.”
■UNITED KINGDOM
Checks to be phased out
A financial body says checks will be phased out by the year 2018 because there are much more efficient ways of making payments than by paper in the 21st century. The Payments Council, whose members include many major banks, said check use has been in “long-term, terminal decline.”
■CYPRUS
Interpol searches for body
Cyprus has asked Interpol for help in tracing the missing corpse of former president Tassos Papadopoulos amid rumors bodysnatchers have put out a ransom demand for its return. With Greek and Turkish Cypriots still stunned by the theft and little headway made by police in the six days since the corpse’s disappearance, authorities said on Wednesday they had called in Interpol. The country’s intelligence services are also investigating the case amid concerns the bizarre affair is affecting sensitive talks to reunite the island.
■BRAZIL
Court awards boy to US dad
A court in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday ruled that a young boy at the center of a high-profile custody dispute should be returned to his US father, but his Brazilian family immediately sought to block the order. The court said nine-year-old Sean Goldman, a US-Brazilian national currently in the care of his Brazilian stepfather after the death of his mother last year, should be handed over to his father, David Goldman, at the US consulate today, court officials said. But Brazil’s Supreme Court said it had received a demand from the boy’s Brazilian grandmother that Sean be allowed to stay in Brazil in accordance with what she said were his express wishes. That appeal could drag out the case for some time yet. The court had handed the case to the Rio tribunal in June after also deciding in favor of David Goldman.
■UNITED STATES
Water planet discovered
A giant waterworld that is wet to its core has been spotted in orbit around a dim but not too distant star. The planet is nearly three times as large as Earth and made almost entirely of water, forming a global ocean more than 15,000km deep. Measurements suggest the planet is shrouded in a thick atmosphere that blocks visible light from its sun, and keeps the water liquid despite it being a searing 120˚C to 282˚C. Writing in the journal Nature, David Charbonneau at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics describes how his team used a suite of eight amateur-sized telescopes to spot the planet as it moved across the face of its star. The telescopes picked up a slight dimming in light from the star as the waterworld, named GJ1214b, passed in front of it every 1.6 days.
■UNITED STATES
‘Vampyre’ jailed for threats
A man who claims to be the leader of a group of vampires has pleaded guilty to charges that he threatened to torture and kill an Indianapolis judge and his family. Forty-five-year-old Rocky Flash, also known as Jonathon Sharkey, was sentenced in a Marion County court on Wednesday to more than two years in jail. Prosecutors say the man threatened to beat, torture, impale, dismember and decapitate Judge David Certo, who is presiding over another case involving Flash. Flash claims to be the leader of a group called the “Vampyre Nation.”
■UNITED STATES
Hockey players batter bat
A junior hockey team is under fire from animal rights activists for killing a bat that flew into its arena during a game. Coach Jon Cooper of the Green Bay Gamblers in Wisconsin on Wednesday defended his decision to send three of his players to go after the bat with sticks in hand. The Gamblers were playing the Cedar Rapids RoughRiders on Tuesday night when the bat showed up. Tori Perry of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals says the team should have tried to net the animal and release it.
■YEMEN
Al-Qaeda plot foiled, 34 die
Security forces have killed 34 alleged al-Qaeda militants and arrested 17 in foiling a planned series of suicide bomb attacks, a security source said yesterday. The incidents took place in Abyan Province in the south and in Arhab directorate, north of the capital, Sanaa. “The operation led to the foiling of an al-Qaeda plan aiming to hit foreign and local interests and schools, including eight suicide bombers who were preparing explosive belts to carry out the plan,” the source said.
‘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
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
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