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.
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
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
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of