AUSTRALIA
Floods bring croc warning
Flooding in the north has prompted a warning about crocodiles, with several of the reptiles spotted in swollen waterways, an official said yesterday. The flood threat near Ingham, Queensland, is easing, but acting mayor of Hinchinbrook Shire Council Andrew Lancini said several residents had sighted the saltwater predators. “There’s usually reports of crocodiles [during floods],” he said. “You would be surprised if we didn’t.” Torrential rains have inundated much of the state after Tropical Cyclone Tasha crossed the coast early on Saturday, and south of Ingham many towns are cut off by floodwaters. The town of Chinchilla in the state’s south was suffering what could be its worst deluge in decades after more than 100mm of rain fell overnight, forcing the evacuation of several homes.
JAPAN
School apologizes
Otemon Gakuin University yesterday apologized to the family of an Indian student who committed suicide in 2007, after leaving a note saying he would kill himself because of bullying at school. “I would like to express my heartfelt apology to the bereaved family members,” dean Masayuki Ochiai told a press conference. The 20-year-old man jumped from a building at the Osaka Prefecture school three years ago, leaving a note saying: “The bullying I keep getting at school ... Cannot take it any more.” He had grown up in Japan and held Japanese citizenship. Compounding the tragedy, his father, depressed about his son’s suicide, later jumped to his death from the same building. Local media said the student had been forced to take his trousers down in front of others and that he had been nicknamed “bin Laden.”
RUSSIA
Chinese killed in blast
Five people, all believed to be Chinese, have been killed in an explosion at an oil refinery in Siberia, the ITAR-TASS and RIA-Novosti news agencies said yesterday. The explosion occured on Sunday night at a refinery in the village of Dauriya in the Zabaikalsky region. The reports said that 18 people were present in the refinery at the time of the blast, all of them believed to be Chinese.
PHILIPPINES
Bomb suspect identified
President Benigno Aquino said yesterday that investigators had identified a suspect and a possible “terror plot” in the Christmas day bombing of a southern church Although the attack on Jolo only wounded six people, Aquino said that the fact that it took place during a Christmas Mass, in a church within a police camp, had made the situation more urgent. “The modus operandi ... is similar to various other incidents and an [intelligence] report of a new terror campaign especially in that part of the country,” Aquino said. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.
INDIA
Conviction protested
Activists in the US and in India have joined Amnesty International to strongly criticize the life sentence given to Binayak Sen, a pediatrician convicted on Friday of helping the Naxalites Maoist guerrillas. Sen, whose work among the poor of Chhattisgarh State has been praised around the world and won him the support of dozens of Nobel laureates, appeared on charges of sedition and conspiracy. “Life in prison is an unusually harsh sentence for anyone, much less for an internationally recognized human rights defender,” said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty’s Asia-Pacific director. “Authorities in India should immediately drop these politically motivated charges.”
UNITED STATES
‘Ivory Queen of Soul’ dies
Teena Marie, the “Ivory Queen of Soul,” who developed a lasting legacy with her silky soul pipes and with hits like Lovergirl, Square Biz, and Fire and Desire with mentor Rick James, has died in Los Angeles. She was 54. The confirmation came from a publicist, Jasmine Vega, who worked with Teena Marie on her last album, last year’s Congo Square. Marie certainly wasn’t the first white act to sing soul music, but she was arguably among the most gifted and respected, and was thoroughly embraced by the black audience. Marie made her debut on the legendary Motown label in 1979, becoming one of the very few white acts to break the race barrier of the groundbreaking black-owned record label. The cover of her debut album, Wild and Peaceful, did not feature her image, with Motown apparently fearing black audiences might not buy it if they found out the songstress with the dynamic, gospel-inflected voice was white.
UNITED STATES
Hefner to wed playmate
In a Christmas message on Twitter, 84-year-old Playboy tycoon Hugh Hefner said on Sunday in Los Angeles he had proposed to girlfriend Crystal Harris, a former Playmate of the Month 60 years his junior. “When I gave Crystal the ring, she burst into tears. This is the happiest Christmas weekend in memory,” Hefner tweeted. Hefner sent a second message on Sunday to clear up any lingering doubts about his intentions. “Yes, the ring I gave Crystal is an engagement ring. I didn’t mean to make a mystery out of it. A very merry Christmas to all,” it said. Harris, a stunning 24-year-old blond, did not explicitly confirm she had accepted his Christmas Eve proposal but, encouragingly, retweeted his messages.
MEXICO
Six found dead in pit mine
Six members of the same family were found dead in a pit in the most violent state of Chihuahua three months after they were kidnapped, prosecutors said on Sunday. On Friday, people exploring the area around an abandoned mine found the body of a boy under age 17 and the bodies of five men aged 19 to 34, the Chihuahua attorney general’s office said in a statement. The bodies were found floating in the water of a crater meters from the mine in the mountain town of Urique, about 600km south of crime capital Ciudad Juarez. Prosecutors told local media some of the victims were brothers and cousins. Armed men captured the group three months ago. Authorities attribute the wave of violence in Chihuahua, especially in Ciudad Juarez, to a dispute between the Juarez and Sinaloa cartels for control of lucrative drug routes into the US.
UNITED STATES
Clinton to stump for Rahm
Former president Bill Clinton will campaign in support of former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel’s bid for Chicago mayor. Emanuel campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said on Sunday that Clinton would be in Chicago next month to appear on Emanuel’s behalf. A date and place have not been determined. Emanuel formally announced he would run for Chicago mayor last month, just weeks after leaving his post as President Barack Obama’s chief of staff. Before his time in the Obama administration, Emanuel spent five years as a congressman for Illinois. Emanuel held various positions in the Clinton administration, including senior policy adviser, director of special projects and political director. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has said he will not seek a seventh term.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of