■CHINA
Tortured Tibetan sentenced
Tibetan environmentalist Karma Samdrup, who said he was “brutally tortured” in custody, has been jailed for 15 years on tomb-robbing charges, his lawyer Pu Zhiqiang said yesterday. The 42-year-old was tried in Yanqi County, Xinjiang, on charges brought in 1998 and later dropped, after he bought artefacts that turned out to have been stolen. “He says he is innocent and that Xinjiang police used false evidence and torture, and didn’t provide an interpreter,” Pu said by telephone. “He said he had been brutally tortured, and I believe him — I last saw him in mid-January and he weighed around 90 kilograms then. Now he’s around 70 kilos, which is too thin for his height.” Karma Samdrup’s wife said he was unrecognizable when he appeared in court.
■NEW ZEALAND
Drunk driver has another
A drunk driver trapped after overturning his car cracked open another can of beer while he waited for emergency crews to rescue him, a court was told. Paul Nigel Sneddon, 47, pleaded guilty to careless driving and drunken driving after being nearly three times over the legal alcohol limit in a district court in Palmerston North, the Dominion Post reported on Wednesday. Police found Sneddon trapped in his overturned Ford Laser on June 1, drinking a can of beer after he failed to take a corner properly and crashed through a wooden barrier. When asked by police how much he had consumed, Sneddon replied: “Plenty, I’ve been drinking for four days straight.” Sneddon told the paper that he went on a drinking binge after losing his job at a bakery on the same day that he heard his father was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Judge Gregory Ross fined him NZ$1,100 (US$780) and disqualified him from driving for 10 months.
■PALESTINE
Israel raids Gaza Strip
Israeli warplanes flew three raids against the Gaza Strip on Thursday night wounding one person, witnesses and Palestinian medical officials said yesterday. A Palestinian man was hurt when the planes attacked the town of Rafah, in the southern part of the territory close to the border with Egypt. Nobody was wounded in the two other raids on the former airport, also in the south, and the town of Beit Hanun in the north. An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed the raids to reporters. “The raids are a reaction to the shelling Thursday from the Gaza Strip of the western sector of the Negev desert” in southern Israel, she added.
■SPAIN
Blame placed on victims
Spanish officials blamed summer solstice partygoers for crossing the tracks into the path of an express train that killed at least 13, but others said a new underground exit was poorly marked and an old crossing was blocked off, leaving travelers confused. At least 14 were injured in the beach resort of Castelldefels, south of Barcelona, shortly before midnight on Wednesday as crowds of young people left a train heading for bonfires on a Mediterranean beach. Many jammed the underpass leading to the beach, but about 30 others climbed down from the platform and tried to scurry across the tracks. Development Minister Jose Blanco on Thursday denied claims the underpass was poorly marked, and insisted that passengers should have known that “you never, never, never cross the tracks.”
■FRANCE
Party axed to save cash
President Nicolas Sarkozy has axed the traditional lavish Bastille Day garden party in the grounds of his Elysee Palace residence as a symbolic savings measure, parliamentary sources said on Wednesday. The decision, to be announced officially next week with other cost cuts, comes as Paris is under pressure from the EU and credit ratings agencies to slash its budget deficit, set to reach 8 percent of national output this year.
■FRANCE
Cannibal get 30 years
A convict who killed his cellmate and ate his lung was sentenced to 30 years in prison on Thursday. Nicolas Cocaign and Thierry Baudry had a fight when Cocaign asked Baudry to wash his hands after he had used the toilet during the night of Jan. 2, 2007. Cocaign strangled Baudry and cut open his chest with a razor blade. “What I did, I liked doing,” said Cocaign, 37. He will have to serve at least 20 years of his sentence.
■UNITED STATES
Jumping genes common
Stretches of DNA known as “jumping” genes are far more common than anyone thought, and almost everyone has a unique pattern of them, US researchers reported on Thursday. They also found an unexpectedly high number of these jumping genes, known as transposons, in lung tumors and said they may hold clues to the highly deadly cancer. “We found that if you have a child, the child could have one or more new copies of these transposons that you don’t have,” Scott Devine of the University of Maryland School of Medicine said in a statement. “From these findings, we predict that there is going to be more variation in human genomes than scientists first believed,” added Devine, who led the research while at Emory University in Atlanta.
■UNITED STATES
Man drifts out to sea
A man who apparently passed out on a pool float at a Tampa area beach ended up drifting about 1.6km from Florida’s shore in the Gulf of Mexico. The US Coast Guard rescued the man on Wednesday afternoon. Coast Guard Petty Officer First Class Mariana O’Leary told the St. Petersburg Times they suspect the man was very drunk. The Coast Guard says a boater reported seeing an unconscious man floating well offshore. The Coast Guard and a Clearwater Fire Rescue unit found the man, still unconscious and wearing a life jacket. He eventually woke up and was checked by paramedics at a Coast Guard station, O’Leary said
■UNITED STATES
American diet too salty
A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday said that only one in 10 Americans keep their salt intake within recommended levels, with the others risking high blood pressure and heart ailments. The report found that average daily sodium intake was 3,466mg, twice as much as the recommended level. Healthy individuals are advised to consume less than 2,300mg of sodium per day, while people with high blood pressure, all middle-age and older adults and all African-Americans are encouraged to limit their intake to 1,500mg. The CDC study found that only 9.6 percent of the population followed the guidelines. It also determined that 77 percent of the salt eaten by Americans comes from processed and restaurant foods, especially pizza, breads and cookies.
■UNITED STATES
Scientists ‘grow’ lungs
Scientists reported important progress on Thursday toward building new human lungs by successfully implanting lab-cultivated cells into a rat’s lungs and through the creation of an artificial device on a microchip that mimics the human lung. Researchers at Yale University managed to create lungs that worked for up to 120 minutes by using laboratory-cultivated cells and implanting them into rats, a scientific first. Separately, researchers with the Wyss Institute at Harvard University created a device that acts like a human lung using blood vessel cells. The artificial lung can be used to test the effects of new medicine and toxins on human lungs. Both studies appear in yesterday’s edition of the journal Science.
■UNITED STATES
Disney opens pet resort
A new luxury resort opening at Walt Disney’s World Resort in Florida boasts air-conditioned suites with televisions and a water park, but this resort is a bit different — it’s for dogs and cats. The new Best Friends Pet Care Resort has more than 4,600m2 of indoor and outdoor space with runs, play areas and room to accommodate up to 270 dogs and 30 cats overnight as well as “pocket pets” like hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits and ferrets. It also offers four VIP suites with TVs, raised bedding and private outdoor yards, a 121m2 “canines only” water park, a grooming salon, orthopedic bedding and treats such as ice cream and tuna on a cracker.
■VENEZUELA
Drug smuggler arrested
Venezuela has captured a suspected Colombian drug smuggler wanted on cocaine charges in the US, who has allegedly collaborated with Mexico’s Zetas drug gang, the justice minister said on Thursday. Tareck El Aissami held up the arrest of Luis Frank Tello Candelo, 47, better known as “El Negro Frank,” as proof of the country’s determination to combat organized crime and drug trafficking.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in 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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was