■SOUTH KOREA
Cartoons supreme on phones
Cartoons are more popular than news with smartphone users, especially during the tedious morning commute, according to a survey seen yesterday. The cartoon application got an average of 372,000 hits a day compared with 280,000 for news and 275,000 for weather, the survey by LG U+ (formerly LG Telecom) said. The country’s third-largest mobile operator said the data came from an analysis of its 170,000 smartphone users last month. Cartoon viewing nearly doubled from 6am to 8am compared with other times of the day as more people “assuage boredom in subways and buses during the morning commute,” the company said in a report.
■HONG KONG
Woman decapitates mother
A woman with a history of mental illness decapitated her elderly mother before leaping to her own death from the family’s 11th floor apartment, local media reported yesterday. The woman stabbed her septuagenarian mother repeatedly on Sunday evening and then hacked off her head with a kitchen chopper, before police arrived to find their apartment engulfed in flames, the Standard reported. The killer, believed to have been in her 40s, was declared dead at the scene after leaping out of the apartment naked, the paper said.
■UNITED KINGDOM
Murdered couple in row
A couple from Birmingham have been murdered in Pakistan, police said, after getting caught up in what was thought to be a row over a wedding. The Foreign Office confirmed that a man, Gul Wazir, had been killed in Pakistan and they were in contact with his family. Wazir’s neighbor, May Sparrow, said she believed he had gone to Pakistan because of a dispute over his daughter’s wedding. “I would imagine he went to Pakistan because he didn’t want his daughter to marry this other person,” she said. Wazir’s former boss, Mohammad Siddique, said the murdered man had been to see him before he left and had talked of resolving a “family clash.”
■CHINA
Frenchman gets death
A court has sentenced a French national and a local accomplice to death on drugs manufacturing and trafficking charges, French consular officials and state media said yesterday. Chan Thao Phoumy, who was born in Laos but now has French citizenship, was handed the death penalty on Saturday by a court in Guangzhou, officials at the French consulate in the city told reporters. He had been sentenced to life in prison in 2007 in connection with a crystal meth ring operating in Guangdong Province. However, he faced a new trial after “additional crimes were uncovered” while he was in prison, resulting in the death penalty, an official newspaper said, without specifying the new crimes.
■AFGHANISTAN
Woman publicly executed
Taliban insurgents publicly executed a woman for alleged adultery, a police official said yesterday, in a reminder of the era when the militant group ruled the country. The 48-year-old widow was given dozens of lashes before being shot dead on Sunday in the remote Qades district, held by the militants in northwestern Badghis Province, said Abdul Jabar who serves as a senior officer in the province. The unidentified man who had the alleged affair with the woman had escaped, he said. A spokesman for the Taliban said he was not aware of the incident and could not comment on it.
■BAHRAIN
Parliamentary poll called
The government will hold a parliamentary election on Oct. 23, its third since the Gulf Arab country’s king launched a political reform process a decade ago to help quell Shiite street protests, the state news agency said. The country, home to the US Fifth Fleet and a close ally of Saudi Arabia, is ruled by the Sunni al-Khalifa dynasty and its majority Shiite population complains of discrimination in jobs and services, an accusation the government denies. The country has the only elected parliament in the region besides Kuwait, but its powers are limited because its bills need to be approved by an upper house whose members are appointed by the king.
■SERBIA
Large heroin stash seized
Border police have seized 20kg of heroin at a border crossing with Bulgaria in the biggest drug seizure this year in the Balkan country. Police chief Ivica Dacic said the drugs were found late on Sunday in a car driven by two Dutch citizens of Turkish origin. He said the street value of the heroin was about 500,000 euros (US$658,800). Dacic said the two were traveling from Turkey along the so-called Balkan route that is used to smuggle drugs from Afghanistan via Turkey and the Balkan countries to Western Europe.
■IRAQ
Bomb kills traffic cops
Officials said a rush-hour bombing at a western Baghdad police precinct has killed two traffic cops and one civilian. Police and hospital officials said five traffic cops and four civilians were also wounded in the bombing at the gates of the Ghazaliyah precinct headquarters. They said the civilians were waiting in line to get their car licenses and registrations. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. Yesterday’s bombing is the latest targeting Baghdad’s traffic police force, which is trying to restore normalcy to the capital’s streets after years of violence.
■NEPAL
Bhutan refugees got to UK
A group of Bhutanese refugees expelled from their Himalayan homeland nearly two decades ago left Kathmandu for Britain yesterday to begin new lives after living in UN-run camps for years. More than 100,000 ethnic Nepalese — a Hindu minority in Bhutan for centuries — were forced out of Bhutan in the early 1990s by authorities who wanted to impose the country’s dominant Buddhist culture. They have lived as refugees in Nepal ever since. Thirty-seven refugees left yesterday and will be followed by many more, said Stephen Jaquemet, an official with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Nepal. Britain is the eighth nation to take in Bhutanese refugees. So far, 32,000 have left for Western countries, most to the US. Bhutan refuses to allow the refugees to return, saying most left voluntarily and renounced their citizenship.
■TURKEY
Military reaches deal
The government and military have reached a deal on appointing the two top military positions — an agreement that highlights growing civilian authority over a military that once shaped politics in the EU candidate country. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had refused last week to approve the military’s first choice for land forces commander. The nominated general was implicated in an alleged campaign to discredit his government.
■VENEZUELA
Chavez rejects US envoy
Newly nominated US ambassador Larry Palmer will not be allowed to take up his post in Caracas after criticizing the government, President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday. “How do you think, [US President Barack] Obama, that I am going to accept that gentleman as ambassador?” Chavez said on his weekly TV program. “It’s impossible.” Palmer told a US senator recently that morale was low in the Venezuelan military and there were “clear ties” between members of Chavez’s government and leftist Colombian rebels.
■UNITED STATES
Patricia Neal dies at 84
Patricia Neal, winner of both Academy and Tony awards, died at her home in Massachusetts on Sunday at the age of 84, the New York Times reported. The cause of her death was not immediately known, but the newspaper said Neal won her Tony award before she was 21, following her Broadway debut in Lillian Hellman’s play Another Part of the Forest, the paper said. The actress made her movie debut in the 1949 comedy John Loves Mary, where she played opposite the late former president Ronald Reagan. In 1964, Neal received an Oscar for best actress for her performance in the movie Hud, where she appeared with Paul Newman.
■UNITED STATES
Teens go for vampires
Maybe they should switch the name to the Vampire Choice Awards? Bloodsuckers again ruled the Teen Choice Awards. The Twilight Saga commanded Sunday’s ceremony in California with 12 wins, including choice fantasy movie, villain and liplock. Meanwhile, the CW’s The Vampire Diaries sucked up seven surfboard-shaped trophies at the taped ceremony, which is scheduled to air yesterday on Fox. The freewheeling ceremony was punctuated with several silly moments, including George Lopez appearing in drag as an older Kardashian sister and host Katy Perry reliving high school days by dressing up as cheerleader, geek, hippie, prom queen and goth.
■UNITED STATES
Eagle halts Alaska flight
An eagle was sucked into an engine of an Alaska Airlines jet as the aircraft was taking off from a small southeast Alaska town on Sunday, causing the flight to be aborted. Seattle-bound Flight 68 was approaching takeoff speed when the eagle went into the left engine shortly after 10am in Sitka. None of the 134 passengers or five crew members was hurt. “We were roaring down the runway and about the time they’d be picking the nose up, we hear a big kaboom,” said passenger Bill Shake of Portland, Oregon. “It sounded like a flat tire.” Shake said another in his large group saw two bursts of flames coming from the engine. The bird collision automatically shut off the plane’s engine, airline spokesman Paul McElroy said.
■UNITED STATES
Beauty not a job guarantee
Good looks can kill a woman’s chances of snaring jobs considered “masculine,” a study by the University of Colorado Denver Business School said. Attractive women faced discrimination when they applied for jobs where appearance was not seen as important, such as manager of research and development, director of finance, mechanical engineer and construction supervisor. The study, published in the Journal of Social Psychology, added that while good-looking women were ruled out for certain jobs, they found that attractive men did not face similar discrimination and were always at an advantage.
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
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