■CHINA
Man breaks tightrope record
The country’s “prince of tightrope walking” broke a world record on Friday after spending several hours a day for two months gingerly crossing a wire above Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium. Adili Wuxor, who has been walking about 19km a day on the tightrope strung across the stadium, finished his last performance on Friday, breaking the record for the longest period of mid-air walking. He walked more than five hours a day for 60 days. A representative from Guinness World Records presented him with a certificate at a news conference. “I’m very lucky to have this opportunity to walk in such an iconic structure,” Wuxor said. “It’s not just a record for myself, but also a record for all Chinese people.”
■HONG KONG
Helicopter crashes in harbor
Thirteen people were plucked to safety after a private helicopter plunged into Hong Kong harbor yesterday, police said. Two passengers were slightly injured in the crash, and all on board the helicopter were taken to hospital for observation, including two crew members, a police spokesman said. “All the people on board were rescued — there are no missing,” he said. The cause of the crash — which occurred about 300m from land near the city’s glittering financial district — was not immediately known.
■INDIA
Top Maoist leader killed
Indian police said yesterday they had killed a top Maoist leader during a gunfight with the rebels in a densely forested region of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. Cherukuri Rajkumar, commonly known as “Azad,” was a top-ranking member of the Maoists’ central committee and one of the insurgency’s most prominent spokesmen. He was shot dead by police on Friday as he was trying to cross into the neighboring state of Maharastra, senior Andhra Pradesh police officer P. Promod Kumar said.
■SOUTH KOREA
Bus crash kills 12
Twelve passengers were killed and eight seriously injured when their bus fell from a bridge near Seoul’s international airport yesterday, police said. The death toll rose to 12 from five within a few hours after the accident, with some passengers succumbing to injuries after being taken to nearby hospitals. TV footage of the wreckage showed the bus fell about 8m off Incheon Bridge on to a construction site for an underpass. A witness said the bus veered off its course as it tried to avoid colliding with a parked car.
■SOUTH KOREA
Assassination plot thickens
A third man has been arrested over a plot to assassinate a top-ranking defector from North Korea, a report said yesterday. The man, whose family name is Han, was a former North Korean agent who has been living in South Korea since the 1960s, Yonhap news agency said, quoting prosecutors. His arrest came after a South Korean court on Thursday handed 10-year prison sentences to two North Korean agents who posed as fugitives from the communist state in a bid to assassinate Hwang Jang-yop. Han was charged with seeking to trace Hwang’s address in a plot to assassinate him, Yonhap said. Han was said to have been recruited by North Korean agents in 2000, who helped him reunite his family members living in the North. North Korea has denied involvement in the bid to assassinate Hwang, accusing Seoul of inventing the story to fuel tension.
■RUSSIA
Let them fly helicopters
As Moscow residents sweltered in an unprecedented traffic snarl-up, the governor of the region around Moscow offered an unusual solution on Friday: buy a helicopter. “I fly in a helicopter. [You] should also buy helicopters instead of cars — then you do not need roads,” Moscow Region Governor Boris Gromov told journalists. His comment came as ill-timed roadworks on the main road to a Moscow airport delayed thousands of people flying on summer holidays. Russian officials rarely encounter traffic jams, since they have blue flashing lights on their cars that allow them to flout rules and drive into oncoming traffic.
■GERMANY
Hitler’s prison records sold
Some 500 documents from the prison that held Adolf Hitler in 1924 documenting the future dictator’s time behind bars are being auctioned. The papers from the Landsberg prison were recently found by a Nuremberg man among the possessions of his late father, who had purchased them at a flea market in the 1970s. They’re being sold at an auction house in the Bavarian city of Fuerth with a starting price of 25,000 euros (US$30,677).
■TURKEY
‘Caliph’ ducks life sentence
A court on Friday sentenced an Islamist extremist known as “The Caliph of Cologne” to 17-and-a-half years in jail in a second retrial for undermining the secular system, Anatolia news agency said. Metin Kaplan, 58, was twice sentenced to life — in 2005 and 2008 — but the appeals court overturned the rulings. Kaplan — head of the Union of Islamic Communities, also known as Hilafet Devleti (Caliphate State) — was put on trial following his expulsion from Germany in 2004 over his role as the leader of the group which aspires to set up a state in Turkey based on Islamic rules. The court ruled on Friday that the group obtained arms and planned violence to undermine the secular system, but did not take action to realize them. Among the charges leveled against him was an alleged 1998 plan to use an explosives-laden plane to blow up the mausoleum in Ankara of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey’s secularist founder.
■GERMANY
Alligator takes evening stroll
An alligator was found roaming the streets of a small German town in the middle of the night, authorities said on Friday. Police in Gross-Rohrheim got a 2am phone call on Thursday from a bystander who said he had just seen an alligator walking in front of a motorcycle shop in the center of town. “At first they just broke out laughing,” police spokesman Ferdinand Derigs said. Two officers dispatched to investigate were able to capture the 1m-long alligator with equipment ordinarily used to capture dogs. “The alligator was taken into custody,” police said in a statement. Authorities soon found it had escaped from a small circus being staged at a nearby school.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Conman ‘sells’ Ritz Hotel
An unemployed British truck driver was convicted on Friday of trying to sell the world famous Ritz Hotel for £250 million (US$380 million) to a duped investor. Anthony Lee convinced potential buyer Terence Collins to hand over £1 million in 2006. The 49-year-old Lee claimed he was a close friend and associate of Frederick and David Barclay, the billionaire brothers who own the central London hotel, but the Barclay brothers had never heard of Lee and were unaware he was claiming to be able to sell the hotel.
■MEXICO
Floods from Alex kill six
The death toll from flooding caused by Hurricane Alex has risen to six, authorities said on Friday. Nuevo Leon state Civil Defense Director Jorge Camacho said the victims died in and around the northern city of Monterrey. President Felipe Calderon toured damaged areas of the city where the force of flood waters had tossed and flipped cars and pickup trucks and nearly buried houses in mud and rocks. Calderon said 1,200 soldiers had been dispatched to help in relief efforts. The city was hit by heavy rain on Thursday that swelled the Santa Catarina river, which is normally dry.
■PANAMA
Rebels ‘planting’ landmines
Colombian drug-running rebels are planting landmines in Panama along cocaine smuggling routes between the two countries’ shared border, Panamanian Public Security Minister Jose Raul Mulino said on Friday. “Panama, for the first time, is finding landmines in its territory,” Mulino said, but did not specify how many devices were found. Authorities found the landmines in the remote, densely forested Darien Province where two border police were injured last week in a mine blast. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe on a visit to Panama this week said the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, were responsible for planting the mines that wounded the police officers.
■UNITED STATES
Arnie sorry over flag cover
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger apologized for a decision by state transportation officials to paint over a giant US flag mural on the side of a Northern California freeway. The 10m-long flag was painted on a concrete slab near Interstate 680 by two men about two weeks after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. Even though the mural had been in clear view of commuters for nearly nine years, a state spokesman said it wasn’t until last month that someone in the agency asked if the flag was on state property. Spokesman Allyn Amsk said it was covered up with gray paint on Wednesday morning. In a statement on Friday, Schwarzenegger extended his “apologies to the artists whose mural inspired drivers along 680 for over eight-and-a-half years.”
■UNITED STATES
One dead in boat collision
Two pleasure boats have collided near the Statue of Liberty, killing one person and injuring two. US Coast Guard Petty Officer Thomas McKenzie said the Friday evening crash in New York Harbor near Liberty Island killed a boater. Two other boaters have been taken to hospitals. Their conditions were not known. The Coast Guard, the New York Police Department (NYPD) and US parks police responded to help the boaters. The cause of the crash hasn’t been determined. The NYPD is investigating.
■UNITED STATES
Official accused of slavery
A young woman from India on Thursday filed a federal lawsuit accusing a government official from her country of enslaving her in New York City, forcing her to work 16-hour days without pay. Shanti Gurung said in her lawsuit that she was “essentially kidnapped” from India in 2006 at age 17. The suit said Gurung was held in involuntary servitude for more than three years by the official, Neena Malhotra, and her husband, Jogesh Malhotra. It said Neena Malhotra is now assigned to the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi. The lawsuit seeking unspecified damages said Gurung, now 21, was paid only US$120 over 40 months.
‘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