HONG KONG
New jury in milkshake case
The judge presiding over the retrial of an American housewife accused of drugging and bashing her husband to death seven years ago has ordered a new jury because of procedural concerns. The highest court overturned Nancy Kissel’s earlier conviction in February, saying she was improperly cross-examined and the judge allowed hearsay evidence. A jury was formed on Tuesday, but High Court Judge Andrew Macrae replaced it yesterday because he was worried about whether a juror was substituted in a lawful manner. Prosecutors say Kissel drugged her husband with a sedative-laced milkshake and then bludgeoned him with a metal ornament. Kissel says she killed him in self-defense after he attacked her with a baseball bat and tried to rape her.
PHILIPPINES
Floods toll reaches 40
Widespread flooding has claimed seven more lives, raising the death toll from two weeks of heavy rain to 40, officials said yesterday. The seven deaths occurred over the past four days as floods engulfed Samar, the country’s third-largest island, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said in its latest bulletin. Seven other people remain missing after being swept away by floods or buried by landslides. Soldiers and government personnel are evacuating more people in Samar and Leyte island, the bulletin said. The heavy rains began shortly before New Year’s Eve and have brought misery to 1.29 million people across 144 towns, including 338,000 who fled their homes or are receiving food or other aid from the government, it said. More than 22,000 people remain in government-run temporary shelters while waiting for floodwaters to ebb, with nearly 1,300 houses damaged or destroyed, it added. An initial government estimate put the damage to roads and bridges, homes and farms at nearly 900 million pesos (US$20.29 million).
IRAN
Talks are ‘last chance’
Talks between Tehran and major powers concerned about its nuclear program to be held in Turkey next week could be the “last chance” for the West, a senior official was quoted as saying yesterday. Official news agency IRNA quoted Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Tehran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, as saying that once the nation is able to make its own fuel for a medical research reactor, it might not return to any future talks if the Istanbul meeting fails. “It might be the last chance because by installing fuel rods produced by Iran into the core of the Tehran Research Reactor, probably parliament will not allow the government to negotiate or send its uranium outside the country and the Istanbul meeting might be the last chance for the West to return to talks,” Soltanieh was quoted as saying to French media.
CHINA
Crash kills 16 people
A collision between a car and an overloaded bus on a central highway killed 16 people and injured many more, a provincial government Web site reported yesterday. The mid-sized bus was carrying 35 passengers, more than its capacity, when it collided with the sedan on a highway outside Xuchang city on Tuesday night, the report on the Henan Province Web site said. Police found four people dead at the scene and 12 more died later, the report said. Xinhua news agency said 23 people were injured. No cause for the accident was given.
AUSTRIA
Many quit Catholic Church
A record number of Austrians turned their backs on the Roman Catholic Church last year in the wake of a slew of sex abuse scandals, official data showed on Tuesday. A total 87,393 people left the Church, 64 percent more than in 2009 and the highest number since 1945, according to figures compiled by the local dioceses and published by the Church’s Kathpress news agency. Church membership is measured by the number of people who pay a Church tax, but in the wake of the recent revelations of alleged sexual abuse by priests and teachers in Catholic schools, more people are opting not to pay that tax and are thus defined as quitting the Church. Out of a total population of 8.4 million, the overall number of paid-up Church members fell to 5.45 million last year from 5.53 million in 2009.
UNITED STATES
YouTube hit arrested
Ted Williams, a homeless man who became a YouTube hit for his astonishing baritone radio voice, was arrested in Los Angeles after an altercation with his daughter, police and reports said on Tuesday. Williams, who had struggled with drugs an alcohol, became an overnight celebrity when a video clip of his voice skills filmed on the side of an Ohio highway was posted on the Internet. He was flooded with job offers and brought to Hollywood — where he and his daughter were arrested after officers were called to a disturbance at his hotel on Monday night, and taken to a local police station, the police department said. Both were released after about an hour, and no charges were pressed, a police spokeswoman said.
BANGLADESH
Probe ordered into Grameen
The government yesterday ordered a probe into Muhammad Yunus’ Grameen Bank in the latest sign of friction between Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the acclaimed pioneer of microfinance. Yunus is celebrated worldwide after winning the 2006 Nobel peace prize for Grameen’s microfinance scheme that provides small loans to millions of poor people, but he has fallen out badly with Hasina. Grameen Bank was recently cleared after a Norwegian documentary accused it of financial wrongdoing, but Hasina has since accused Yunus of pulling a “trick” to avoid tax and said microfinance loans were “sucking blood from the poor.” A five-member committee would look into the documentary’s allegations that US$96 million was illegally diverted from Grameen Bank to other parts of Grameen group, a senior government official said.
FRANCE
Bokassa chateau for sale
Auctioneers were scheduled to sell a dilapidated chateau outside Paris yesterday that once belonged to one of Africa’s most ruthless dictators, the late Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic. Bids at the courthouse in Versailles will start at 735,000 euros (US$950,000), although a higher final sale price was expected. The chateau, in the Paris suburb of Hardricourt, comes with a vast tree-filled park and a house for a caretaker. The lawyer for the administrator of the Bokassa estate said the chateau needs major work, including electricity, water and heating.
UNITED KINGDOM
Explosion kills one
One man died and another was seriously injured in an explosion at a recycling plant in Rotherham. South Yorkshire Police say a waste incinerator exploded at the Sterecyle plant about 2:40pm on Tuesday, blowing a hole in the factory’s wall and damaging cars parked across the street.
‘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