■SOUTH KOREA
Compensation for murderer
The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the government to compensate a convicted murderer for refusing him permission to correspond with the media. It upheld a lower court ruling that Shin Chang-won should receive 1 million won (US$888) in damages after prison authorities blocked his written interviews with the media. The highest court rejected an appeal by prison authorities against the lower court ruling, a court spokesman said, as the law allows inmates to correspond with people outside the prison. Shin, 43, broke out of jail in 1997 while serving a life sentence for murder and robbery. He evaded a nationwide police hunt for two years before being caught in 1999.
■SINGAPORE
Tom Jones cancels shows
Welsh crooner Tom Jones was forced on Thursday to cancel shows in Singapore and South Korea after doctors said he risked “serious permanent damage” to his legendary vocal chords if he performed. The aging sex symbol was due to perform at Singapore’s Resorts World Sentosa casino resort on Thursday evening, and in Seoul today. The 69-year-old star has been laid up in Singapore for a week after abruptly cutting short a previous show scheduled for Friday last week because of acute laryngitis.
■JAPAN
Arrest over headless body
Police arrested a 60-year-old man yesterday after the headless naked body of a woman was discovered stuffed into a suitcase and dumped at the bottom of a cliff. Seiichi Iinuma, who said he was unemployed, was being held on suspicion of abandoning the body, police in the central prefecture of Ishikawa said. He reportedly told police the woman was a foreigner aged in her 30s whom he had met about a year ago through a magazine advertisement. The man said he packed her body into the suitcase and threw it off a cliff in Kanazawa city last October. It was found late last month by a construction worker.
■SOUTH KOREA
Cyber-parents on trial
A couple went on trial yesterday accused of leaving their baby daughter to starve to death while they raised a “virtual” child on the Internet. The pair appeared in court at Suweon, south of Seoul, charged with negligent homicide, an official in the city’s prosecutors’ office said. The man, aged 41, and his wife, aged 25, who were arrested last month, had been on the run since their three-month-old baby was found dead on Sept. 24. A post mortem examination showed she suffered a long period of malnutrition. The couple “raised” an online girl character while leaving their own prematurely born daughter at home, feeding her just once a day between 12-hour stretches at an Internet cafe, media reports have quoted investigators as saying.
■INDIA
Killer commits suicide
A beach bar waiter in the resort state of Goa jailed for life last week for the brutal murder of a retired British woman has committed suicide in prison, police said. Anand Kambli, 30, was convicted of killing Denise Higgins in a frenzied attack at a rented bungalow in Margao, south Goa, in April 2007. The 52-year-old former civil servant, from Oxfordshire in England, was discovered with multiple stab wounds lying in a pool of blood with her throat cut. Kambli was found hanging from the roof of a prison toilet in Goa’s Aguada jail on Thursday morning where he had been sharing a cell with 23 other inmates.
■MEXICO
Man sought in girl’s death
Prosecutors said on Thursday they were searching for a man believed linked to the shocking death of a disabled four-year-old girl whose body was found in her bedroom in a Mexico City suburb more than a week after her parents reported her missing. State Attorney General Alberto Bazbaz said an autopsy showed Paulette Gebara Farah died between five and nine days before her body was found in a search of her families’ luxury apartment that started late on Tuesday and resulted in the grisly find early on Wednesday. That means the girl could have already been dead on March 22, the day her mother reported her missing, telling police she put the girl to bed the previous night and found her gone in the morning.
■MEXICO
Elton John stage collapses
Part of the stage being set up for a weekend concert by singer Elton John at the famed Chichen Itza ruins collapsed during construction, injuring three workers, authorities said on Thursday. Two of the workers were treated for slight injuries and released, and the third was hospitalized with a broken leg. The British singer was not present when the accident occurred on Wednesday night. The National Institute of Anthropology and History, which is in charge of the country’s pre-Hispanic sites, said there was no damage to the 1,200-year-old Mayan ruins. Spokesman Francisco de Anda said the stage was put up at a distance from the pyramid and temples, precisely to avoid any potential damage.
■UNITED STATES
Scout says parents negligent
The president of the Boy Scouts council for the Portland area has testified that parents of some Scouts were negligent for allowing sleepovers that led to sex abuse. Eugene Grant told a jury on Thursday in a US$29 million sex abuse lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America and its Cascade Pacific Council that parents should not have allowed boys to stay overnight with a single man at his apartment. The man, Timur Dykes, has admitted to molesting a victim who filed the lawsuit.
■IRAQ
Alleged assassins killed
US and local troops have killed or arrested at least six suspected al-Qaeda leaders allegedly involved in an extortion and assassination ring in the north, the US military said. The suspected militants were killed or arrested in security operations from March 18 to March 24 in Mosul, 390km north of Baghdad and an al-Qaeda stronghold, it said in a statement late on Thursday. The suspects were accused of involvement in an extortion and assassination network that helped fund al-Qaeda around Mosul. Its targets included oil companies and small businesses, the statement said.
■SERBIA
Nazi arrest warrant issued
Belgrade has issued an international warrant for the arrest of an alleged Nazi war crimes suspect who lives in the US. A court said yesterday that 88-year-old Peter Egner is suspected of war crimes against Jews in Belgrade during the German occupation of the country in World War II. Egner allegedly had served in a Nazi unit that killed about 17,000 civilians in 1941 and 1942. Prosecutors said the unit used a specially designed van in which it gassed the victims with carbon monoxide. Egner lives in a retirement community outside Seattle. US authorities have moved to revoke his US citizenship, saying he had lied about his past in the application in 1960s.
‘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