CHINA
Building fire arrests made
Thirteen people have been arrested over the high-rise apartment block fire that killed 58 people in Shanghai this month, local media said yesterday. At least 12 people were already reported to be in custody, but they have only now been formally arrested by Shanghai prosecutors, media reports said. The suspects include the former CEO of a Jingan district construction company and the former head of Shanghai Jiayi, a construction and interior design firm, the local Dongfang Zaobao reported. Officials from a company overseeing the 28-story building’s management and renovation have also been placed under arrest, the Xinhua news agency said.
SPAIN
Woman acquires the Sun
After billions of years the Sun finally has an owner — a woman from the soggy region of Galicia said on Friday she had registered the star at a local notary public as being her property. Angeles Duran, 49, told the online edition of daily El Mundo she took the step in September after reading about a US man who had registered himself as the owner of the moon and most planets in our Solar System. There is an international agreement which states that no country may claim ownership of a planet or star, but it says nothing about individuals, she added. The document issued by the notary public declares Duran to be the “owner of the Sun, a star of spectral type G2, located in the center of the solar system, located at an average distance from Earth of about 149,600,000km.”
SWEDEN
Man turns tummy into stereo
A man broadcast music from his stomach for several hours via a mini audio system, but said he was disappointed by the sound quality. The sound was “bad, bad. It was a very bad sound, but that was not the important thing, I just wanted to show that it worked,” said Fredrik Hjelmqvist, 45, owner of a hi-fi equipment shop in Stockholm. Hjelmqvist hopes to sell his invention for around 12,800 euros (US17,000). The plastic capsule containing the device is about 3cm long and 1.5cm in diameter and contains a miniature battery-powered audio device. The music was heard by using a stethoscope connected to an amplifier, however, the music faded after about three hours. “The operation shouldn’t in any case last beyond this weekend, for natural reasons,” Hjelmqvist added.
THE NETHERLANDS
Unplanned concert sold out
Tickets for a Dutch rock festival sold out in hours on Friday, even though it’s nearly nine months away and not a single act has yet been announced. The lure? Buy now, sock it to the man, and avoid higher ticket taxes. Lowlands Festival organizers put tickets on sale months ahead of schedule to protest a government plan to increase taxes on live performances from 6 percent to 19 percent on Jan. 1. The result: Fans snapped up all 45,000 tickets in hours, even though the festival won’t take place until Aug. 19-21 next year.
UNITED STATES
Thief underestimates police
Police didn’t have to go far to find a bank robbery suspect in Oregon. They say 23-year-old Nathan Alan Bramlage was spotted after walking into the Eugene police station on Wednesday to use a public phone in the lobby. The Register-Guard reports an officer recognized the man from surveillance video of the bank robbery the day before. Detectives followed and arrested him about two blocks away. Detective Ralph Burks says Bramlage apparently assumed police wouldn’t recognize him.
SUDAN
Voter registration extended
Authorities said on Friday they would give southerners an extra week to register for a referendum on the independence of their region, but promised the extension would not delay the Jan. 9 vote. The announcement will add to concerns over the tight schedule for the politically sensitive plebiscite, already plagued by logistical delays and wrangling between northern and southern leaders. The referendum gives people from the oil-producing south the chance to decide whether they should secede or stay part of Sudan, a vote promised in a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of north-south civil war.
UNITED STATES
Obama elbowed in game
President Barack Obama had to get 12 stitches on his upper lip on Friday after being struck in the face by an elbow during a basketball game, the White House said. Obama was given local anesthetic during the treatment, spokesman Robert Gibbs Gibbs said, adding that he was given a smaller filament that increases the number of stitches to ensure a smaller scar. The White House later identified the man who struck the president as Rey Decerega, the program director at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, who said the game was all in good fun and did not apologize. “I learned today the president is both a tough competitor and a good sport,” Decerega said in a statement.
FRENCH GUIANA
Telecoms satellites launched
An Ariane rocket has put into orbit two satellites to provide telecommunications after a launch from the country on Friday, space officials said. The Ariane-5 rocket blasted off from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) launch center in Kourou on the northeast coast of South America at 3:39pm. Twenty-seven minutes after launch, the rocket released INTELSAT 17 for US-based operator Intelsat. The satellite will provide telecommunications throughout Europe, the Middle East, Russia and Asia.
UNITED STATES
Police nab would-be bomber
Federal prosecutors say a Somali-born teenager plotted to carry out a car bomb attack at a crowded Christmas tree lighting ceremony in downtown Portland, Oregon, on Friday, but the bomb turned out to be a dud supplied by undercover agents as part of a sting. Mohamed Osman Mohamud was arrested at about 5:45pm local time just after he dialed a mobile phone that he thought would blow up a van laden with explosives, but instead brought federal agents and local police swooping in to take him into custody. Federal court documents show the sting operation began in June after an undercover agent learned that Mohamud had been in contact with an “unindicted associate” in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier region. Mohamud is a naturalized citizen.
UNITED STATES
Toilet killer gets 25 years
A man has been sentenced in to 25 years in prison for drowning his wife in a toilet in 1999. Doug Plude was accused of poisoning 28-year-old Genell Plude with migraine medicine, drowning her in the toilet at their Eagle River, Wisconsin, home and trying to make it look like a suicide. The 43-year-old pleaded guilty to first-degree reckless homicide as part of a plea deal this fall. Plude initially was convicted of first-degree intentional homicide in 2002 and served five years. That conviction was overturned because an expert witness had exaggerated his credentials.
‘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