PHILIPPINES
Two jailed for cybersex den
Two Swedish men have been jailed for life for running a cybersex den in which naked women performed acts for clients watching over the Internet, a court official said yesterday. A court found Bo Stefan Sederholm, 31, and Emil Andreas Solemo, 35, guilty of human trafficking on Tuesday and sentenced both to life terms, court clerk Nelison Salcedo said. “Disrespect for Philippine women and violations of our laws deserve the strongest condemnations from this court,” Salcedo quoted regional trial court judge Jeoffre Acebido as saying in his ruling.
MALAYSIA
Minister launches offensive
The government has announced a major crackdown on criminal gangs using social networking sites such as Facebook to enlist teenage recruits as “street fighters,” reports said yesterday. Minister of Home Affairs Hishammuddin Hussein said the government was launching the offensive after a proliferation of online recruitment pages in recent months, the Star daily reported. “The ministries, including the Information, Communications and Culture Ministry, the [multimedia] commission and the police will be brought in to tackle the issue,” he was quoted as telling the paper. “They all have their own expertise and it is just a matter of coordinating them to achieve the goal.” He said authorities would treat all types of organized crime with the same gravity as terrorism, the paper reported.
CHINA
High-speed rail trials begin
Trial runs began yesterday on a highly anticipated high-speed rail line between Beijing and Shanghai, one month before the link is scheduled to go into commercial service, state media reported. The high-speed line will halve the journey time to less than five hours, the Shanghai government-run news portal EastDay.com reported, adding the first train left at 8:45am yesterday. The trains will run at speeds up to 300kph depending on the time of day and they will not carry passengers during the trial period, the state-run China News Agency reported. The new trains will not run at the originally planned top speed of 350kph in order to make journeys safer and more affordable, Rail Minister Sheng Guangzu (盛光祖) said last month.
INDONESIA
Death sentence overturned
The Supreme Court has overturned a death sentence for convicted Australian heroin smuggler Scott Anthony Rush, giving him life imprisonment instead, a defense lawyer said yesterday. The decision on 25-year-old Rush, after a final legal appeal to the courts, was a rare one as drug smugglers normally get capital punishment under Indonesian law. “Our next move is to seek ways so that [Rush] can serve the rest of his sentence in Australia,” lawyer Frans Hendra Winata said. Rush was caught in his teens in 2005 with heroin draped around his body in an airport on Bali.
BANGLADESH
Court jails 84 border guards
A special military court has jailed 84 border guards, bringing the total incarcerated for their role in a bloody 2009 mutiny to more than 2,000, a military spokesman said yesterday. Scores of senior military officers were killed in the 33-hour uprising that began when soldiers at the Bangladeshi Rifles headquarters in Dhaka went on a killing spree. The mutiny swiftly spread across the country, with thousands of guards taking up arms against their commanding officers in the worst military rebellion in the country’s history.
RUSSIA
Fire near nuclear waste out
Authorities claimed on Tuesday to have put out a large wildfire that raged for several days over an area of radioactive contamination in the central Ural region. A wildfire burned “during the holidays [on Monday] in the zone of nuclear contamination,” said Governor Mikhail Yurevich of the Chelyabinsk region, where Mayak, a facility that treats nuclear waste, is located. “It was successfully stopped,” Interfax quoted the governor as saying. The announcement came after Russian Greenpeace said on its forum on Tuesday that the fire over the contaminated area had grown over two days, calling it “one of the most threatening current events connected with forest fires.”
UNITED KINGDOM
15 eggs best for IVF: study
A study of more than 400,000 in-vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles has found that doctors should aim to retrieve about 15 eggs from a woman’s ovaries in a single cycle for the best chance of achieving a live birth. The study, published in the Human Reproduction journal, found a strong link between live birth rates and the number of eggs retrieved in one IVF cycle. The live birth rate rose with an increasing number of eggs up to about 15, researchers found, but it levelled off between 15 and 20 eggs, and then steadily declined beyond 20 eggs. Arri Coomarasamy of Birmingham University, who led the study, said the findings suggest that aiming for about 15 eggs per cycle would maximize the chances of a live birth, while minimizing the risk of overstimulating the ovaries, risking a condition known as ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. Infertility is a problem that affects around one in seven couples globally, experts say.
FRANCE
Student dresses up in butts
The nation’s latest fashion statement has nothing to do with haute couture and a lot to do with saving the streets of Paris from the scourge of cigarette butts. Paris student Flore Garcia Bour, 22, is picking up butts by the hundred from the streets and stitching them painstakingly into a dress in an effort to draw attention to the smelly detritus degrading the city’s streets. The international relations graduate says she does not aim to stop smokers lighting up, just to change their behavior. “I have always been revolted by the number of butts dropped on our streets, while it would be simple to change habits and to put them into a rubbish bin,” she said. “I hope my dress shocks smokers and plays a role in making them more aware of the damage they do by throwing their butts away that degrade in 18 months at best or 12 years at worst.” She started stitching the dress on April 26 and plans to finish it on May 15 with cigarette butts collected in jars from all over the city then treated to remove the smell.
UNITED KINGDOM
Fergie hurt by royal snub
Sarah Ferguson, the former wife of Prince Andrew, said it was “difficult” that she wasn’t invited to last month’s royal wedding, but blamed herself for the snub. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, she said it was all the more painful because of memories of her own wedding in Westminster Abbey, where Prince William and Kate Middleton wed on April 29. “I was not invited, and I chose to go and be in Thailand in a place called Camelia and ... the jungle embraced me,” said the 51-year old, in an interview set to air yesterday, according to People magazine. The snub was “so difficult, because I wanted to be there with my girls and to be getting them dressed and to go as a family. And also it was so hard because the last bride up that aisle was me,” she added.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Protests leave one dead
At least one person was killed and eight were wounded on Tuesday in violent demonstrations to demand better public services in the northeast, police said. The unidentified protester who died had been shot in the chest during clashes between demonstrators and police in the poverty-stricken area of San Francisco de Macoris, 135km north of Santo Domingo, police said. Several journalists were among the wounded, police added. Demonstrators were demanding construction of schools, paving of roads and improved water and electricity services.
UNITED STATES
Spaceport to offer tours
Tours of Spaceport America in southern New Mexico will be offered to the public starting this week. Spaceport America is the world’s first dedicated spaceport. Anchor tenant Virgin Galactic plans to use the facility to take tourists on short hops into space. Other commercial spaceflight operations are also planned. The New Mexico Spaceport Authority announced on Tuesday that it had selected Albuquerque-based company Follow The Sun Inc to conduct the preview tours. The spaceport is expected to be fully operational later this year.
UNITED STATES
Man tries to open plane door
Air travel authorities say a passenger tried to open an emergency door on a Delta flight from Orlando, Florida, to Boston, Massachusetts, but was subdued by another passenger. Boston Logan International Airport spokesman Phil Orlandella says it’s unclear why the passenger tried to open the door on Tuesday night on the Airbus 320 flight. Delta Air Lines Inc spokeswoman Susan Elliott said an off-duty police officer subdued the passenger and detained him while the plane departed for Boston. State police say officers arrested the passenger on charges of interfering with a flight crew.
UNITED STATES
Church allows gay ministers
The US Presbyterian Church voted late on Tuesday to allow gays and lesbians to be ordained as ministers and lay leaders, becoming the fourth mainline US Protestant church to do so. The decisive vote capping a three-decades-long debate was cast by a regional group in Minnesota, the Los Angeles Times reported. The Presbyterian Church joins the Episcopal and Evangelical Lutheran Churches as well as the United Church of Christ in allowing homosexuals to openly serve as ministers and lay leaders. However, the measure will allow regional organizations to decide the issue for themselves.
UNITED STATES
Bristol Palin had jaw surgery
Bristol Palin admits her recent change in appearance was due to a surgical procedure — for “medical reasons.” The daughter of 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin told Us Weekly that she underwent corrective jaw surgery in December. Her face now appears thinner, with higher cheekbones and an angular jaw. The new look, complete with Sarah Palin losing 2.3kg, was unveiled on April 30 at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington. “Yes, it improved the way I look, but this surgery was necessary for medical reasons,” she told the magazine for its May 23 issue, which will be on newsstands tomorrow. She said she had the procedure so her jaw and teeth could properly realign. Bristol said she is pleased with the new look. “I look older, more mature and don’t have as much of a chubby little baby face,” she told the magazine.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia