CHINA
Lawyer demands ruling
The lawyer for an activist arrested for seeking compensation in a 2008 tainted milk scandal said yesterday he had asked a Beijing court to rule on the months-old case or release the man. Li Fangping (李方平), who represents activist Zhao Lianhai (趙連海), said he had told a Beijing district court on Thursday that it was violating judicial procedural laws by delaying a ruling on the case. Zhao — whose own child was one of 300,000 who were sickened in 2008 by drinking milk laced with the industrial chemical melamine — was arrested in December. He was charged with causing public disturbances as he rallied other victims in the scandal to protest and demand compensation. His trial opened in March, but there has not yet been a ruling.
CHINA
Pollution up amid car boom
Booming car sales have had a devastating effect on the environment, the Ministry of Environmental Protection warned in its first-ever report on pollution caused by vehicle emissions. About a third of 113 cities surveyed failed national air standards last year, as the number of vehicles swelled to 170 million, up 9.3 percent from a year ago and 25 times the number on the roads in 1980, the ministry said. Vehicle exhaust emissions exceeded 51 million tonnes last year, including more than 40 million tonnes of carbon monoxide, nearly 5 million tonnes of hydrocarbons and about 6 million tonnes of nitrogen oxide, the report said.
CHINA
Highway pileup kills 12
A 41-vehicle pileup on a fog-shrouded highway in Jiangsu Province yesterday left at least 12 people dead and 13 injured, Xinhua news agency reported. The accident occurred on a 600m stretch of an expressway near Zhangshu City early yesterday in heavy fog, Xinhua said. Most of the vehicles involved in the chain-reaction wreck were trucks, seven of which caught fire, it said. One truck was carrying fireworks when the accident happened, but it was not immediately clear if the vehicle caught fire or exploded. More than 120 people were involved, including passengers on a bus, it said.
MALAYSIA
Four killed in floods
Four people were killed and almost 50,000 forced out of their homes and into relief camps as floods hit the north, state media said yesterday. Rising waters have hit the three states of Perlis, Kedah and Kelantan. An airport and a major highway have been closed, and train services and water supplies have also been disrupted by the nation’s worst floods in five years. The first fatalities were a 13-year-old boy and a 64-year-old German woman whose bodies were recovered in Kedah state earlier this week. The bodies of two girls who fell into an irrigation canal in Kedah were recovered on Thursday, state news agency Bernama said. Another two children who disappeared while playing in a flooded paddy were feared drowned.
PAKISTAN
Forty dead in mosque blast
A suicide bomber demolished a mosque in the northwest as Friday prayers were ending, killing at least 40 people after a relative lull in militant violence, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provincial government officials said. The blast occurred in Darra Adam Khel, a suburb of the provincial capital, Peshawar. “It was a suicide attack, and there are 40 dead so far,” said Shahid Ullah, a senior provincial government official. At least 60 people had been wounded, provincial information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said. It was the biggest attack since a September suicide blast that killed 54 in the city of Quetta.
CROATIA
Presidents pay respects
Serbian President Boris Tadic on Thursday apologized for war crimes in Vukovar, the site of the bloodiest episode of the 1990s conflict in Croatia, on an historic reconciliation visit to the town. “I am here to pay respects to the victims and to express words of apology and regret,” Tadic said at the Ovcara memorial, a notorious site where about 200 people were gunned down and buried in a mass grave in 1991. In the past year, Tadic and Croatian President Ivo Josipovic have visited several symbolic war sites in Bosnia and Croatia to honor the victims and express their regrets.
GREECE
Mail bombs used gunpowder
The two young Greeks who allegedly mailed a wave of micro-bombs to embassies and foreign leaders used a simple mix of gunpowder and hollowed-out books to rattle nerves across Europe, according to investigators and court documents. Pretending to represent Greece’s top cleric, the deputy prime minister and the debt-ridden country’s finance ministry, a 22-year-old chemistry student and a jobless 24-year-old were allegedly able to send explosive packages as far as German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office. Nobody was hurt and only two devices made it out of Greece. Only two of the 14 went off where intended, while Greek authorities believe one or two may still be in the mail.
NETHERLANDS
Carbon plan scrapped
Plans for storing carbon dioxide underneath a small town, a strategy that reduces harmful emissions to combat global warming, were scrapped on Thursday by the government. The government had planned to pump 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from a Royal Dutch Shell oil refinery into two depleted gas fields 2km under Barendrecht, a town of 43,000 people. However, Economic Affairs Minister Maxime Verhagen said the plan “is no longer possible in the short term.” Homeowners in the town have fiercely objected to the proposal.
SWEDEN
Book shatters king’s peace
King Carl XVI Gustaf has appealed for peace and quiet after a new book shattered a long-held tradition among Swedish media not to print intimate details about his private life. Speaking to throngs of reporters at his annual moose hunt on Thursday, the monarch said he had not read the book, which includes claims of visits to seedy nightclubs and an extramarital affair in the 1990s. Without addressing those claims directly, the 64-year-old king said he understood from media headlines that the book dealt with events that happened “far back in time” and that he had spoken with his wife, Queen Silvia, about it. “We’re turning the page, much like you do in your newspapers, and looking ahead instead,” he said. Rumors about the king’s private life have swirled around for years, but even the tabloids had refrained from putting them in print until the book, Carl XVI Gustaf — The Reluctant King.
UNITED KINGDOM
Tubby lawmakers stay home
The Ministry of Defence says two lawmakers from Northern Ireland have been barred from visiting troops in Afghanistan until they can find flak jackets big enough to fit their bellies. The ministry says Ken Maginnis and David Simpson were scheduled to fly to Kabul this week, but army-issued body armor does not exceed 124.5cm, too snug for both. A ministry spokesman said on Thursday the British army offers “a wide range of sizes, but, regrettably, none was suitable on this occasion.”
CANADA
Lotto winners donate prize
A couple who won C$10.9 million (US$10.87 million) in the lottery just gave it away. Allen and Violet Large said on Thursday they won their fortune in a July 14 Lotto 649 draw and decided to donate 98 percent of it, about C$10.6 million, saving the rest for a rainy day. “We were quite happy with what we had and the way we were going,” said Allen Large, a 75-year-old retired welder. “We have no plans. We’re not travelers. We’re not night-prowlers. We’re not bar-hoppers.” After taking care of their family, the Larges donated the bulk of the prize to churches, fire departments, cemeteries and the Red Cross in Lower Truro, Nova Scotia, as well as hospitals where Violet, who has cancer, has undergone treatment.
UNITED STATES
Man sentenced in slaying
A Honduran man who admitted pulling the trigger in the execution-style killings of three college students in a Newark, New Jersey, schoolyard was sentenced on Thursday to three consecutive life terms in a case that jolted the state’s largest city into dealing with its crime problem. Melvin Jovel, 21, pleaded guilty to murder, attempted murder and weapons charges days before his trial was to begin in September. Prosecutors said Jovel and five other young men lined up Iofemi Hightower and Dashon Harvey, both 20, and 18-year-old Terrance Aeriel, against a schoolyard wall in Newark and shot each of them in the back of the head on a summer night in 2007.
UNITED STATES
Spacecraft snaps comet
A NASA spacecraft made a successful fly-by on Thursday of the Hartley 2 comet and within minutes began sending to Earth arresting images taken as the enormous space rock hurtled along the outer fringes of the solar system. “The mission team and scientists have worked hard for this day,” said Tim Larson, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which is monitoring the mission. The EPOXI reached the Hartley 2 after a 2.5-year journey across the solar system, a distance of about 4.6 billion kilometers. The EPOXI mission flew within about 700km of the comet on Thursday.
UNITED STATES
Oldest woman gains a year
The family of the newly designated world’s oldest person, Eunice Sanborn, says she is in fact 115 — a year older than official records indicate. Sanborn was vaulted into the spotlight on Thursday, recognized as the oldest living individual following the death of Eugenie Blanchard at age 114 in the French West Indies, based on a Web site that tracks living centenarians. When told of her “achievement,” Sanborn’s reaction was simple: “Oh, think of that.” Sanborn of Jacksonville, Texas, turned 115 in July although the US Census Bureau erroneously recorded her birth date as 1896 rather than 1895, her family claims.
UNITED STATES
Cops lose drug stash
Law enforcement officials want people to be on the lookout for a black box with white lettering that says “METH,” after a deputy lost a stash used to train police dogs. Sergeant Lloyd Funk says the deputy accidentally left the box on a bumper after a canine training exercise on Oct. 27. It contained about 28g of methamphetamine. The deputy drove off with the drugs perched on the vehicle. The Jackson Hole News & Guide reports that officers literally trying to get drugs off the street haven’t been able to find the box. Anyone with information is being asked to call the sheriff’s office.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The