AUSTRALIA
Two arrested in drugs bust
Two Malaysians were arrested and charged yesterday with importing heroin with a street value of more than A$50 million (US$53 million) — the country’s biggest haul in a decade. Customs officers working at Port Botany in Sydney were tipped off about a suspicious furniture shipment from Malaysia earlier this month and uncovered 42kg of the drug hidden inside. The Malaysians, aged 30 and 34, were seized in raids on Sydney addresses and face life behind bars if convicted. The successful raids followed the arrest of four people and the seizure of 239kg of methamphetamine earlier this month in the country’s biggest haul of its kind.
MALAYSIA
Police hunt acid attackers
Detectives are hunting two men who have been throwing acid on pedestrians in a sting of attacks that have sent shockwaves through the capital, police said yesterday. Kuala Lumpur has been plagued by attacks on at least 22 people since February, terrifying residents across the city and its suburbs. City police chief Zulkifli Abdullah said the pair, who ride a motorcycle, have targeted mostly women and children. “We are doing more patrols and we hope people are more alert,” Zulkifli said. “We will take very firm action against this irresponsible act.” In the latest attacks last weekend a woman with a one-year-old baby was splashed, while another was reportedly hospitalized with burns to her face.
BANGLADESH
Court lifts ban on ‘fatwas’
The Supreme Court yesterday lifted a ban on issuing Islamic religious edicts, or fatwas, but said extrajudicial punishments in the name of Islam were illegal, the attorney general said. The High Court banned fatwas in 2001 after a series of cases of Muslim women being beaten and caned, but the ruling was appealed by a group of Islamic preachers who argued fatwas were integral to Islamic practice. “Fatwas on religious matters may be given only by properly educated persons and may be accepted only voluntarily,” Attorney General Mahbubey Alam said, quoting the Supreme Court ruling. “No punishment, including physical violence and or mental torture in any form, can be imposed or inflicted by anybody in pursuance of fatwas.”
AUSTRALIA
‘Planking’ comes under fire
An Internet craze known as “planking” has come under fire from authorities after the arrest of a man for sprawling on a police car. Planking involves someone lying flat on their stomach in unusual and sometimes dangerous situations, with photographs of their exploits shared through social media sites. Facebook page Planking Australia currently has almost 10,000 fans and hundreds of photos of people lying on train tracks, escalators, fire hydrants, motorbikes and other objects. However, the craze has landed one 20-year-old in court in Queensland State after he was allegedly found “planking” on a police car on Wednesday. Planker Michael Brannon defended the so-called sport and accused police of overreacting. “Bloody ridiculous if you ask me, just a bit of harmless fun and they are wasting their time on this instead of catching [criminals],” he wrote on Facebook.
PAKISTAN
Drone attack kills five
A US drone fired two missiles into a vehicle in Pakistan’s tribal district of North Waziristan yesterday, killing at least five suspected militants, local security officials said. It was the third such attack reported on the Afghan border, which the US has dubbed the headquarters of al-Qaeda.
UNITED STATES
Economic optimism grows
Americans are growing more optimistic about the economy, a sentiment that is benefiting President Barack Obama despite public disenchantment with his handling of rising gasoline prices and swollen government budget deficits. An Associated Press-Gfk poll found that more than two out of five people believe the economy will get better, while a third think it will stay the same and nearly a fourth think it will get worse, a rebound from last month’s more pessimistic attitude. And for the first time since the 100-day mark of his presidency, slightly more than half approve of Obama’s stewardship of the economy. Both findings represent a boost for Obama, though he still must overcome ill will over government red ink and the high cost of gas at the pump.
UNITED STATES
Journalists in Libya visited
The employer of one of two US journalists being detained by forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi says they have been allowed a visitor for the first time after more than a month in captivity. James Foley was covering the conflict in Libya for the Boston-based news agency GlobalPost when he was captured on April 5. Foley has been detained with Clare Morgana Gillis, a freelance journalist who wrote for the Atlantic and USA Today. A GlobalPost spokesman said on Wednesday an intermediary visited Foley and Gillis in Tripoli and said they were in good health and being treated well.
HONDURAS
Journalist shot, killed
Two gunmen on a motorcycle shot and killed a journalist outside his home in a city in the north, officials said on Wednesday. Francisco Medina, a 35-year-old television reporter, was ambushed on Tuesday night in the city of Morazan, 120km north of the capital, said Santos Galvez, a member of Honduras’ College of Journalists press group. Galvez called Medina’s slaying work-related and said he had received death threats. In his reporting, Medina was critical of the national police and of private security firms contracted by ranchers in the area, where drug traffickers operate. Medina is the 11th journalist to be killed in 18 months in the country.
UNITED STATES
Trump surprised by scorn
Real-estate magnate Donald Trump suggested on Wednesday it’s not much fun flirting with the idea of running for president in the face of relentless attacks and ridicule. “Nobody said it was going to be easy, but I had no idea I would get hammered in the way I’ve been hammered the past few weeks,” Trump said. The billionaire host of NBC-TV’s Celebrity Apprentice has hinted for months that he will run for next year’s Republican nomination. However, Trump has slipped badly in surveys taken since President Barack Obama released his birth certificate confirming he was born in the US.
UNITED STATES
‘Granny Bandit’ arrested
The “Granny Bandit” wanted in a series of armed robberies outside department stores was arrested on Wednesday after a crime analyst spotted the suspect during her lunch break, police said. Dodi Wasbotten, 51, was taken into custody hours after a woman with a child reported being held up outside a Target store by a woman who was wearing a muumuu and covered her face with a scarf. After grabbing the victim’s purse, she took off in a dark sedan with missing front hubcaps. A woman matching the suspect’s description was involved in three other stickups in Fontana, California, since Sunday.
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