■VIETNAM
Addicts escape center
More than 100 inmates escaped from a drug rehabilitation center and police were searching for dozens still at large, state media reported yesterday. The 103 patients took advantage of the chaos caused by a brawl between fellow inmates on Monday night to overpower guards and break through the fence at the facility in Pham Van Coi village, some 70km northwest of Ho Chi Minh City, the Thanh Nien newspaper reported. Police recaptured nearly 50 inmates, but were still searching for the others, the report said.
■AUSTRALIA
Man charged with murder
Police charged an Indonesian-born man yesterday over the murder of a driver for the Malaysian consulate who was beaten with a hammer and stabbed outside his Sydney home. Police originally thought the attack on Mohd Shah Saemin, 43, who died in inner-city Leichhardt late on Sunday, stemmed from a road rage incident moments earlier, but Indonesian-born Hazairin Iskandar, 55, whose wife had reportedly worked with Saemin, was arrested yesterday and charged with his murder, police said. Officers were still hunting a second man involved in the assault.
■FIJI
Leader mulls pull-out
Fiji’s military leader said his country may quit the Commonwealth because of pressure from the organization to call elections, a report said yesterday. Fiji was suspended from the Commonwealth last September after Voreqe Bainimarama broke a promise to hold elections to restore democracy following a 2006 coup. Bainimarama said the Commonwealth had failed to understand his regime’s plans to carry out reforms and draw up a new Constitution before holding elections by September 2014.
■AUSTRALIA
Protest curries favor
Politicians, police and thousands of ordinary Australians sat down at Indian restaurants across the nation yesterday for “Vindaloo Against Violence,” a mass dining protest against racial attacks. More than 17,000 people registered to participate in the grassroots campaign, which went viral — and global — from humble beginnings as a 100-person event on social networking site Facebook. Organizer Mia Northrop, 35, said she had received event notifications from as far afield as Tajikistan, with people set to down a curry in Tokyo, Amsterdam, New York and Stockholm in solidarity with the cause. “I’m really thrilled that this got the support that it did, there’s no way that I could have imagined it would end up to be this big,” said Northrop, a digital media designer. “I’m really happy that it meant so much to so many people.” The campaign was designed to be a show of support for Australia’s 450,000-strong Indian community in the wake of a series of attacks.
■AUSTRALIA
Cat traps to be tested
Scientists are hoping to add some truth to the old adage by using curiosity to kill some of the country’s millions of wild cats. New traps that attract cats using sound and light, and then squirt them with poison, will soon be tested on South Australia’s Kangaroo Island, the Invasive Animals Cooperative Research Center said on its Web site. “This is a tunnel that emits a ... sound and bright features that attract cats to it,” professor Steven Lapidge said. “It requires them to walk through a tunnel and if they set off certain sensors in a certain configuration, then it detects the shape of the animal. If it is a cat, then it will deliver a short spray onto its belly of a toxic substance that puts them to sleep.”
■AUSTRALIA
Judge says celibacy is ‘cruel’
A judge described the vow of celibacy as “cruel” and repressive yesterday as he jailed a Catholic priest for an Internet sex crime. Judge Allan Hughes made the comment as he gave Robert MacGregor Fuller, 54, six months’ prison for using a Web cam to masturbate for what he believed was a 13-year-old girl. “It is suppressing a human instinct,” the judge told a Sydney court. “I don’t know why they don’t change the rules, it is archaic, it is cruel.” Fuller, who was trapped in a police sting, was arrested last August in a car park where he had arranged to meet the fictitious girl for sex.
■PAKISTAN
Two men shot dead
Witnesses say suspected Taliban militants shot dead two men they accused of spying for the US in a northwest tribal region along the Afghan border. Area resident Akram Ullah said the men’s bodies were found together in Mir Ali town in North Waziristan yesterday. Each had a note attached that alleged the victim was a spy and threatened other informants with the same fate. Another resident, Sana Ullah, said one man was a tribal elder and the other was Afghan.
■PHILIPPINES
Chinese products banned
Health regulators said yesterday they had banned nine more apparently Chinese-made cosmetic products because they were found to contain dangerous levels of mercury. Food and Drug Administration tests of the facial creams, seven advertised as a cure for freckles and two others as “skin-whitening,” prompted the latest advisory. “Collected on separate occasions at various establishments, [they] contain heavy metal [mercury] exceeding the allowable limit of one part per million,” the advisory said.
■SPAIN
Police nab shoe-thrower
Police said they arrested a Syrian national who tried to hit Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan with a shoe late on Monday as Erdogan left the Seville town hall after receiving an award. The shoe flew over Erdogan’s head as he was about to get into a car with his wife. Spain’s Cadena SER radio played a recording in which the man shouted “Long live Kurdistan” in Spanish before being arrested. Turkey has been battling Kurdish rebels since 1984. A police spokeswoman said on Tuesday the 26-year-old was living illegally in Spain with a Syrian passport.
■ISRAEL
‘Son of Hamas’ spied
The son of one of the founders of Hamas spied from inside the movement for Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported yesterday. According to extracts of an article to be published tomorrow, agents were able to prevent dozens of attacks thanks to the help of 32-year-old Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef. In particular, the information led to the arrest of Ibrahim Hamid, once the movement’s military chief in the West Bank. The article came from extracts of a book, Son of Hamas, cowritten by Mosab Hassan Yousef, who converted to Christianity 10 years ago and lives in California.
■IRAN
Lula urges dialogue
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva said on Tuesday that the global community, in its quest for peace, should avoid isolating Iran over its controversial nuclear program. Lula, whose country has friendly ties with Iran, spoke at a summit of leaders of Latin America and the Caribbean at a joint press conference with the event host, Mexican President Felipe Calderon. “Peace in the world does not mean isolating someone,” Lula said. “I’m going to Iran in May to buy things from them. Brazil exports to Iran are worth one billion dollars a year and imports nothing from them.”
■UNITED STATES
Snowmen stage protest
A group opposed to increasing Michigan’s taxes wasn’t about to let a good snowstorm go to waste. Common Sense in Government crafted more than three dozen snowmen on the state capitol lawn to greet lawmakers on Tuesday. The snowmen, complete with menacing or sad faces, held signs with slogans including “Don’t raise our taxes!” and “I’m mad and I vote.” To stop a widening budget gap, Governor Jennifer Granholm has proposed extending the state sales tax to cover some services, while lowering the sales tax rate by half a percentage point. Michigan faces a budget shortfall of roughly US$1.7 billion for the fiscal year starting on Oct. 1. Common Sense in Government says lawmakers should cut spending before raising or extending taxes.
■UNITED STATES
Widow sues widow
The widow of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employee killed when a Texas man crashed his plane into the agency’s Austin office is suing the pilot’s widow. Attorney Daniel Ross says the lawsuit against Sheryl Stack seeks to determine if the pilot left behind insurance policies or other assets. Ross represents Valerie Hunter, whose 68-year-old husband Vernon Hunter was killed last week when authorities say Joseph Stack deliberately crashed his single-engine plane into the IRS office. Joseph Stack left behind an Internet posting blaming the IRS for personal problems. The lawsuit filed on Monday says Sheryl Stack should have warned others about her husband.
■UNITED STATES
Teens injured in shooting
A teacher tackled a man armed with a high-powered rifle just after two teenage students were shot at a suburban Denver middle school that is just a few kilometers from Columbine High School, the site of one of the country’s deadliest school shootings, authorities said. One male and one female were shot at about 3:30pm on Tuesday outside Deer Creek Middle School in Littleton, Jefferson County Sheriff’s office spokeswoman Jacki Kelley said. Both students were taken to a nearby hospital and were expected to survive. Student Steven Seagraves said he was about 3m away when an adult approached students and asked them: “Do you guys go to this school?” When the students said they did, he shot them, Seagraves said.
■UNITED STATES
Full-body scans imminent
The first of 150 full-body scanners planned for airports will be installed in Boston next week, officials said on Tuesday. The plan is to install three machines at Logan International Airport, a homeland security official said on condition of anonymity. In the coming two weeks, officials plan to install another machine at Chicago’s O’Hare International. The rest of the 150 machines that were bought with US$25 million from President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan are expected to be installed in airports by the end of June, another homeland security official said.
■UNITED STATES
Plastic debris fills ocean
Researchers say a high concentration of plastic debris is floating in the Atlantic Ocean north of the Caribbean. The study’s principal investigator said on Tuesday the findings are based on more than 64,000 tiny bits of plastic collected over more than 22 years by Sea Education Association undergraduates. Researchers believe surface currents carry the debris to the area between 22 degrees and 38 degrees north latitude. Similar currents also deliver trash to a spot between Hawaii and California known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Kara Lavendar Law says it’s difficult to compare the two, but researchers in both places collected more than 1,000 pieces during a single tow of a net.
■UNITED STATES
Family sues Hillary Clinton
The family of a Dallas police officer who died in a crash two years ago while escorting then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in a motorcade has sued her, the city of Dallas and the maker of the helmet he was wearing. Senior Corporal Victor Lozada-Tirado’s widow and children filed the lawsuit in state district court on Monday, saying the city did not give him proper training for escorting a motorcade. It also accuses Clinton and her campaign of not giving timely notice for motorcade assistance and claims the helmet he wore was defective. The family is seeking damages including loss of economic support. Lozada-Tirado, 49, died on Feb. 22, 2008, when he was thrown from his motorcycle after clipping a curb and crashing into a guard rail.
■HAITI
More shelter tents needed
The country has purchased 50,000 tents from China, but needs at least 150,000 more to shelter the people made homeless by the Jan. 12 earthquake, Prime Minister Rene Preval said on Tuesday. “We’ve purchased 50,000 tents from China for US$5 million ... They’ll be arriving here this week,” Preval told a press conference on his return from a regional summit in Mexico. He said the tents would provide shelter for the homeless before the rainy season starts in April.
‘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