INDIA
Officer shot self for award
A policeman was recovering in hospital yesterday after he shot himself in a misguided attempt to win a bravery award, media reports said. Mahesh Rajguru claimed that six unidentified men opened fire when he was on personal protection duty at a house of a former politician in Jaipur, the capital of the eastern state of Rajasthan. He claimed the men sped away in a car after the supposed attack on Sunday night, the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency reported. “Senior officials rushed to the spot and found his statements and crime scene suspicious,” Additional Commissioner of Police Arun Macya told PTI. “He confessed no such incident that he had narrated took place and he shot himself just to claim a gallantry award by showing bravery.” Police said all the empty cartridges found at the scene belonged to Rajguru’s gun and that they had also found narcotics in his living quarters.
CHINA
Millions embezzled from HSR
Almost US$30 million of funds marked for building a high-speed rail (HSR) network was embezzled, government auditors said yesterday, the latest in a string of scandals to hit the railways ministry. The money was misappropriated through last year by individuals and work units at construction companies during the building of the Beijing-Shanghai express rail link, the National Audit Office said in a report. While the sum is a mere 0.14 percent of the 138.4 billion yuan (US$21.1 billion) spent on the project, it highlights the pervasive corruption among government agencies and underscores how tough it is for Beijing to root it out.
LAOS
More than 111,000 need aid
More than 111,000 people in the impoverished country will need emergency food aid before the next harvest, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said yesterday. The WFP said shortages of rice in the country’s south and center stem from a combination of weather factors last year — dry spells, a late rainy season and flash floods. “We’re now raising funds” to support an emergency rice distribution probably in June or July, filling a gap before the harvest, which occurs around November, WFP spokeswoman Cornelia Patz said.
PHILIPPINES
No plans to save drug mules
The country said yesterday three convicted Filipino drug mules would be executed in China next week and that it did not plan any more appeals to save them. “The government respects the Chinese law and the finality of the verdict of the Chinese People’s Court,” foreign ministry spokesman Ed Malaya told reporters. “All sentences will be carried out in one day.” Chinese court officials had informed Philippine authorities that the trio — Ramon Credo, 42, Sally Villanueva, 32, and Elizabeth Batin, 38 — would be executed on Wednesday. Philippine authorities had gone to great lengths in a bid to save the three, who were convicted in 2008 of trafficking heroin, and made repeated appeals for their sentences to be commuted to life in jail. The government had insisted that the three, who are among 227 Filipinos jailed in China for drug offences, were from poor families and were duped into becoming drug mules by crime gangs. Vice President Jejomar Binay went to Beijing last month to plead for their lives. Chinese authorities responded to his trip by delaying the trio’s executions — they were originally scheduled to be executed in February — but said they would eventually be put to death.
LITHUANIA
Machine gun found in mail
Customs and postal officials say they have found a fully functional machine gun dating from World War II, complete with ammunition, in a package at Vilnius International Airport. Officials said on Tuesday that the German-made MG-42 machine gun was found after scanning a suspicious 20kg package posted in Lithuania and bound for Germany. Customs spokeswoman Asta Mikeleviciute says it was the first time that customs authorities had ever uncovered such a parcel and an investigation has been launched.
UNITED KINGDOM
Extra seats but still no room
A rail company has tried to tackle the problem of overcrowding on its trains by making its seats so narrow that more than half of passengers cannot fit into them while many are left in pain, a Member of Parliament said. Penny Mordaunt, Conservative MP for Portsmouth North, told parliament that commuters travelling on South West Trains between London and Portsmouth had to squeeze into hard seats measuring 43cm with no arm rests or spaces between them. She said the cramped conditions had forced some passengers to seek medical attention. A report commissioned by South West Trains found 59 percent of passengers could not fit into the seats on its class-450 carriages when their elbows were taken into account. Mordaunt said seats on South West Trains were so narrow that when she attempted to squeeze three colleagues into the space allocated by the train provider, one would have been 90 percent in the aisle. A spokeswoman for Stagecoach, which owns South West Trains, defended the seats, saying they were “ergonomically sound” and complied with legislation.
SOUTH AFRICA
Rich targeted as witches
Newly rich South Africans are increasingly accused of witchcraft and attacked by neighbors, police in Limpopo Province said yesterday. “Now you are a witch because you are driving a 4-by-4. This is the mentality that people have,” police spokesman Hangwani Mulaudzi told the SAPA news agency. “Once people start amassing wealth, getting bigger houses and sending their children to better schools, it means you are engaging yourself in witchcraft. People think something is helping you do that and then they accuse you of witchcraft.” Mulaudzi said Limpopo had seen four attacks in the past three months where alleged witches were either assaulted or killed. In the most recent incident, a grandmother and her granddaughter were stoned to death and then set alight by a mob on Sunday after being accused of witchcraft, SAPA reported.
JAPAN
Porpoise ‘rescued from field’
Animal rescue volunteers saved a porpoise from a field after it was washed 2km inland by the March 11 tsunami, the Asahi daily reported yesterday. Ryo Taira and his group were in the area around Sendai rescuing cats and dogs when they received a phone call that took them a while to comprehend, the daily said. “There’s a dolphin in the rice fields!” said the caller, Masayuki Sato, confusing the porpoise with the similar-looking sea mammal. The volunteers rushed to the site where they saw the animal — a finless porpoise — wriggling in a flooded rice field. They made a stretcher from car parts and a futon mattress they found and tried to catch it with a net. When the animal eluded them, Taira waded into the field and picked it up, the report said. The volunteers covered the animal in wet towels, put it in their car and returned it to the sea.
UNITED STATES
Turtle starts fire
Fire officials said a lumbering pet turtle sparked a fast-moving fire in a New York City apartment after crawling out of its tank and knocking over the terrarium’s heat lamp onto the floor, igniting a pile of art supplies, including thinner and paint. Giovani, a six-year-old African tortoise about the size of a soccer ball, survived Monday’s fire in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Another turtle that lived in a water tank was killed. The New York Post said both reptiles resided in their owner’s bedroom, who was not home at the time.
UNITED STATES
Church offers Easter payout
A church that gave away US$1,000 to fill more pews on Easter Sunday last year said it would do it again this year. Lindenwald Baptist Church in Hamilton draws names to award US$500 each to a member of the congregation and a guest. Pastor Randy Moore told the Journal-News of Hamilton that the southwest Ohio church had hoped for 1,000 worshippers last year, when it made the offer for the first time. It packed in 1,140 — more than double the usual Sunday attendance of around 500. The pastor said given the economy, the church will continue the cash giveaway to provide a financial as well as a spiritual blessing on the holiday.
VENEZUELA
Chavez comments on Mars
Capitalism may be to blame for the lack of life on the planet Mars, President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday. “I have always said, heard, that it would not be strange that there had been civilization on Mars, but maybe capitalism arrived there, imperialism arrived and finished off the planet,” Chavez said in speech to mark World Water Day. Chavez warned that water supplies on Earth were drying up. “Careful! Here on planet Earth where hundreds of years ago or less there were great forests, now there are deserts. Where there were rivers, there are deserts,” he said.
UNITED STATES
Jilted kisser fires shots
Helen Staudinger, 92, wanted a kiss, and authorities say she wouldn’t take no for an answer. The Fort McCoy, Florida, woman fired a semi-automatic pistol four times at her 53-year-old neighbor’s house after he refused to kiss her, police said on Tuesday. Staudinger was arrested on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and shooting into a dwelling on Monday. According to a police report, Staudinger went to Dwight Bettner’s house and refused to leave until he gave her a kiss. When he said no, they argued and she left angry, the report said. Bettner said he was on the phone with his father moments later when he heard gunshots. One bullet went through a window, spraying him with glass. “I’ve taken her trash out for her, just neighborly stuff,” said Bettner, who moved in six months ago. “I guess she just took that as something else.”
MEXICO
Statue a fake, museum says
A Mayan statue that sold for the record price of 2.912 million euros (US$4.133 million) at a Paris auction this week is a fake, the government said on Tuesday. “The piece ... is a fabrication, because it belongs to none of the pre-Hispanic cultures in Mexico,” the foreign ministry and the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) said in a joint statement. It said INAH experts had determined it was a fake because it did not match the style of the period it was supposedly from. The 165.5cm god was said to be from the Maya late classical period (550-950).
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