SOUTH KOREA
Google in hot water
Police have found evidence that Google illegally collected private data while producing its Street View mapping service, a report said yesterday, amid similar claims elsewhere in the world. Yonhap news agency said the police’s cyber crime unit had decoded data stored on hard disks used for Google Street View and found evidence of illegal gathering of private information. “We’ve discovered records and contents of e-mails and online messenger chats individuals exchanged through Wi-Fi networks,” a police official quoted by Yonhap said. Google said it was “profoundly sorry for having mistakenly collected” personal data, adding that it was cooperating with Seoul’s telecommunications authorities and the police.
CHINA
Bus driver killed by tiger
A tour bus driver was mauled to death by a tiger at a breeding center in Heilongjiang Province this week after he got out of his vehicle to check on a mechanical problem, the Beijing Youth Daily reported yesterday. Jin Shijun was attacked by a Siberian tiger and dragged off to a wooded area, it said. Jin had died by the time other people were able to drive off the animal in the Hengdaohezi Feline Breeding Center in Hailin City, it said. China says it has nearly 6,000 endangered tigers in captivity, but just 50 to 60 living in the wild in its northeast, including about 20 Siberian tigers. A number of attacks by captive tigers on humans have been reported in recent years. In one attack in 2009, police in the northeast shot dead two starving Siberian tigers after they severely mauled a zoo worker.
PHILIPPINES
No sex on the beach
Sex on Boracay’s famed beaches may be banned after a television crew filmed two naked couples making out in public on New Year’s Day, the local mayor said yesterday. The clip by ABS-CBN network showed one pair apparently having sex on the beach and the other locked in a passionate kiss in the water, with the woman’s bare breasts clearly shown above the waterline. ABS-CBN said it filmed the apparently Western couples at 2am on New Year’s Day following a large beachside party on Boracay. “We’re thinking of a ‘no sex on the beach’ [rule] so the other tourists would not be scandalized,” Malay Town Mayor John Yap told ABS-CBN in an interview posted on its Web site this week. Yap said authorities were aware of the sensitivities of the Roman Catholic nation. “It’s an isolated case and quite difficult to control but, if police had seen them, they would have been arrested for public scandal,” he said.
MALAYSIA
Wife ‘blames’ medium
A man abandoned his wife after a temple medium convinced him that she was a demon who wanted to kill him. The Star newspaper yesterday quoted the wife, who gave her name as Loh, as saying that her factory manager husband wanted a divorce and had refused to meet their two teenage children for fear his wife would use them to kill him. “The medium told my husband I had been casting spells on him for the past 15 years,” Loh was quoted as telling a news conference in Kuala Lumpur. “He refused to eat or drink at home because he thought I poisoned the food.” Loh said the medium was heavily in debt and likely taking advantage of her husband, who had withdrawn their children’s savings before deserting the family. Malaysians often seek spiritual aid from an assortment of faith healers, mediums and witch doctors to solve personal problems and work issues.
SWEDEN
Birds fall out of the sky
In a week that saw unexplained massive bird deaths in the southern US, up to 100 birds were found lying in a snow-covered street in the southwestern town of Falkoeping on Wednesday, officials said. “Most were dead,” Christer Olofsson of rescue services said of the 50 to 100 jackdaws, a type of crow. Ornithologist Anders Wirdheim said the find was surprising. “This is unusual,” he told tabloid Aftonbladet, which posted online a reader’s photo of dozens of black birds littering a snow-covered road. “They are probably jackdaws. They spend the winter in large flocks. If they are exposed to disturbances, they can become so stressed that they fly themselves to death,” he said. Olofsson told reporters the birds were first spotted at about midnight by a police patrol and that five had been taken in for analysis. Olov Andersson of the National Veterinary Institute told news agency TT the carcasses would be analyzed and that bacterial and viral tests, including for swine flu, would be performed. The Falkoeping incident comes after two unexplained mass bird deaths in the US. On Tuesday, officials in Louisiana said 500 birds were discovered dead, shortly after thousands of birds were discovered dead in neighboring Arkansas. Arkansas officials said preliminary testing showed no signs of disease in the dead birds and that they died of “acute physical trauma.”
GERMANY
Baby left in a suitcase
A day-old girl was dressed neatly in a sweater, wrapped in a sleeping bag, zipped into a suitcase and left near a hotel in Hamburg, police said on Wednesday as they launched a search for her mother. Police said a passer-by alerted the porter of the hotel to the unattended luggage on Tuesday. Hotel security workers partially opened the small, black suitcase, but only saw clothes. They stored it in the hotel’s luggage room. Later on Tuesday, a hotel porter heard whimpering coming from the suitcase. He opened it, found the baby and alerted police. Hamburg police said a homicide squad is investigating the case because the baby had been abandoned and could have easily died. The infant was being cared for at a nearby hospital and doctors said she was healthy, according to police. However, she was underweight at only 2.2kg and 45cm long. Doctors at Altona Pediatric Hospital examined the baby girl and said the umbilical cord of the baby had only been tied with a thin thread that most likely means that the mother gave birth without medical help, Bild reported on its Web site.
NETHERLANDS
Firefighters battle blaze
Local authorities in the southern town of Moerdijk told residents to stay indoors on Wednesday night as about 150 firefighters attempted to smother a huge blaze that had been raging for hours at a chemical storage and packing company. The fire started in the early afternoon at Chemie-Pack Nederland BV in an industrial estate, sending a towering plume of thick smoke into the air and causing several powerful blasts, apparently as storage tanks exploded. Police spokesman Willem van Hooijdonk told national broadcaster NOS that “poisonous, flammable and corrosive” chemicals were stored at the company, but Moerdijk Mayor Wim Denie told a press conference that measurements had not detected fumes at a level that could form a health risk. With the fire still blazing late on Wednesday, firefighters said they would extinguish the flames under a “blanket of foam” and warned it could initially increase the amount of smoke. Residents were warned to stay indoors.
UNITED STATES
Fat clogs shipping lane
Workers with the US Coast Guard and the Texas General Land Office used pitchforks on Wednesday to pierce and remove chunks of beef fat clogging the Houston Ship Channel, shutting down nearly 1.6km of one of the nation’s busiest marine arteries. No ship traffic was delayed, however, because the spill occurred at the end of the waterway, said Richard Brahms, a spokesman with the Coast Guard. About 60,000 liters of animal fat poured into the channel through a storm drain on Tuesday after an onshore storage tank owned by agricultural company Jacob Sterns and Sons leaked 946,000 liters of it.
UNITED STATES
Twain classic reissued
A new US edition of Mark Twain’s classic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is to be published with a notable language alteration: All instances of the N-word are to be expunged. The word occurs more than 200 times in the novel, which was first published in 1884, and in its 1876 precursor, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The books tell the story of young boys’ adventures along the Mississippi river in the mid-19th century. In the latest edition, containing both books, the word “nigger” will be replaced in each instance by the word “slave.” The word “injun” will also be replaced.
UNITED STATES
Homeless man hired
A professional basketball team has offered an unspecified job to a homeless man with a golden radio voice. He is being sought by NFL Films for possible work, as well. Ted Williams, whose deep baritone and plight have made him an online video sensation, was first contacted on Wednesday by the Cleveland Cavaliers. Team spokesman Tad Carper said details are still being worked out on a possible position for Williams. Carper said any job could include working in the NBA team’s downtown Quicken Loans Arena. It is not yet known if Williams has accepted the team’s offer. Williams’ compelling tale has also drawn interest from NFL Films, which has chronicled pro football for nearly 50 years and wants to contact him. “It’s that voice,” said Kevin McLoughlin, director of post-production films for the NFL. “When I heard him tell his story, I said: ‘That’s what we do. This guy can tell a story.’ Somehow, some way, I need to get a demo with him.” Williams was spotted by the Columbus Dispatch newspaper standing near a highway exit ramp. In a video interview, Williams — holding a cardboard sign that asks motorists for help and says, “I’m an ex-radio announcer who has fallen on hard times” — explains in his smooth, deep voice that he grew up in New York and that he was drawn to radio at the age of 14. Williams said he went to school for his voice training, but that his life was later affected by alcohol and drugs. Williams says he has been sober for two years.
UNITED STATES
LA couple plead not guilty
A couple accused of killing and dismembering a man at a downtown Los Angeles hotel have pleaded not guilty to murder. City News Service reports Edward Garcia Jr and his wife, Melissa Hope Garcia, entered their pleas on Wednesday in Los Angeles. The Garcias have been charged with murder and the special circumstances of torture in the November killing of Herbert Tracy White. A maid found his dismembered body stuffed in a backpack and under a bed in the Continental Hotel in the downtown Skid Row area. Authorities believe the Garcias were trying to rob White, who had befriended them and gave them money.
‘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