CHINA
Abducted children freed
Police said yesterday they had freed 89 children in a crackdown on trafficking that was launched this year after online reports of widespread abductions sparked public outrage. Police also arrested 369 people in the six-month operation to break up a pair of “large criminal enterprises” involved in child trafficking across 14 provinces, the Ministry of Public Security said in a statement. The children were sold for an average of about 40,000 yuan (US$6,200), it said.
SOUTH KOREA
Wife survives stabbing, fall
A woman who was allegedly stabbed by her husband and pushed down a 100m cliff survived the attacks and reported him to police.The 44-year-old woman was stabbed four times in her chest and stomach in an argument last week with her 56-year-old husband, who suspected she was seeing another man. The man then put his wife in a car, drove to a remote area in Goseong County and pushed her off the cliff, a detective said yesterday. Media reports said the man had planned to take his wife to a hospital after the stabbing, but changed his mind when he saw she was motionless. She regained consciousness the following day, climbed up the cliff and was rescued by a passing motorist. The couple married early this year.
NEW ZEALAND
Goldfish survive quake
Two goldfish have survived 134 days since the Feb. 22 Christchurch earthquake without any pet food or electricity to power their tank filter. The goldfish, named Shaggy and Daphne, were in a 100-liter tank in the Quantum Chartered Accountants office. It was only this month that Quantum workers were allowed back into the building and found the fish alive. Three other goldfish in the tank had disappeared without a trace.
VIETNAM
US calls for priest’s release
The US, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have called on Hanoi to immediately release an ailing dissident priest who was sent back to prison after being granted medical leave. The US State Department expressed concern for 65-year-old Reverend Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly, who was taken to Ba Sao prison outside Hanoi on Monday. He had been released from prison in March last year with a brain tumor after suffering three strokes.
AUSTRALIA
Woman sues over sex injury
A woman injured when a hotel room light fitting fell and hit her on the face while she was having sex on a work trip sued the government yesterday, claiming she was entitled to compensation. The government employee suffered injuries to her nose, mouth and a tooth and was mentally scarred after the glass fitting fell from the wall and struck her in the face, her lawyer said. She was staying at a rural hotel ahead of a meeting. She says she should get damages because the incident happened while she was on official business. The workplace safety agency says the sex was a “frolic of her own.”
INDONESIA
Ex ‘saves’ bride at wedding
A family stopped a wedding after discovering the groom was a woman, but an ex-boyfriend stepped in to marry the bride and save the family’s “face.” The family had become suspicious because the “groom” did not bring relatives or ID to the ceremony, the Jakarta Globe reported yesterday. The erstwhile “groom” had a male physique and had known the bride for seven months.
LIBYA
Lockerbie bomber appears
Ailing former agent Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi, convicted for life over the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, made his first public appearance in nearly two years on Tuesday at a meeting in support of Muammar Qaddafi. Megrahi, 59, who has terminal cancer, was released from a Scottish jail on compassionate grounds in August 2009. He is the only man convicted over the bombing of Pan Am flight 103, which killed 270 people, mostly US nationals. TV images showed an emaciated Megrahi, sitting on a wheelchair, at a meeting of his tribe in support of Qaddafi’s regime. His last public appearance was a September 2009 meeting with African lawmakers at a Tripoli hospital.
KOSOVO
Police take over border
Police spokesman Brahim Sadriu yesterday said special police units had completed an operation to take control of two contested border crossings with Serbia. The operation has been condemned by the EU, but Prime Minister Hashim Thaci has defended his move, even though it left one policeman dead and four slightly injured. The operation is aimed at placing troops loyal to Kosovo in a northern region that takes orders from Serbia as part of Belgrade’s ongoing campaign to undermine Kosovo’s 2008 secession. Serb officials want Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian police to fully withdraw from the Serb-run north and leave Serb members of the force to man the border crossings.
SOUTH AFRICA
Man awakes in morgue
A man awoke to find himself in a morgue fridge — nearly a day after his family thought he had died. Health department spokesman Sizwe Kupelo said on Monday that the man woke up on Sunday afternoon, 21 hours after his family had called in an undertaker, who had sent him to the morgue after an asthma attack. Kupelo said the man started yelling, prompting morgue workers to run away in fear. They eventually returned and removed him from the fridge. He was then taken to a nearby hospital and later discharged by doctors who deemed him stable.
ARGENTINA
Huge Evita portrait unveiled
A giant iron portrait of Eva Peron was unveiled on Tuesday on the front of the social development ministry building, where she gave a historic speech prior to her death from cancer in 1952. The 31m high, 24m wide work weighing 15 tonnes resembles the iconic portrait of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara in Havana, Cuba. President Cristina Fernandez, who inaugurated the portrait, said it was during a visit to Cuba that it occurred to her to pay homage to the wife of former president Juan Domingo Peron. “I saw an image of Che on the ministry building he worked in. How is it possible that a society pays tribute to a man who is not from that country and we have no tributes to a woman who not only marked the entry of women into politics and the country’s most important social revolution, but who also represented the people and country with more passion than anyone in history,” Fernandez said.
UNITED STATES
Arnie may pay support
Arnold Schwarzenegger has amended a divorce filing and withdrawn a request that a judge terminate Maria Shriver’s rights to spousal support. The actor and former California governor’s filing replaces a document he submitted last week that also indicated he wanted Shriver to pay her own attorney’s fees. The amended response filed on Monday in Los Angeles states he is also willing to pay Shriver’s attorney.
UNITED STATES
Strauss-Kahn trial postponed
Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s much-anticipated court date in his New York sexual assault case has been postponed for more than three weeks as prosecutors continue investigating. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers said on Tuesday they had agreed to put off the Aug. 1 date to Aug. 23. They say they hope that by then, prosecutors will have decided to dismiss the case. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office declined to comment on the investigation. Strauss-Kahn is the former head of the IMF. He is accused of attacking a hotel housekeeper who came to clean his suite on May 14. He denies the charges.
UNITED STATES
Representative arrested
Democratic Representative Luis Gutierrez was arrested in front of the White House on Tuesday afternoon while protesting the deportation of illegal immigrants, a spokesman said. The 10th-term Illinois congressman has long worked on immigration issues, taking a prominent role in pushing the DREAM Act, which would give a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants brought to the US as children. The measure has so far failed to pass Congress. Gutierrez’s spokesman, Douglas Rivlin, said the congressman was arrested along with a dozen other immigration protesters who sat down in front of the White House, an area where people are supposed to keep moving.
UNITED STATES
Mexican troops enter Texas
Almost three dozen uniformed Mexican soldiers in four military vehicles crossed the Rio Grande into South Texas near McAllen without authorization. The incident happened on Tuesday afternoon on the new Donna-Rio Bravo International Bridge over the Rio Grande, about 24km southeast of McAllen. Federal officials were releasing little information on the incident, but US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) spokesman Rick Pauza said the crossing was inadvertent and that no gunfire or injuries were reported. Pauza said “occasionally these incidents do occur” and CBP has procedures in place for handling them.
UNITED STATES
Sea lion killings banned
The federal government reversed itself on Tuesday and withdrew permission it had granted to Oregon and Washington to kill sea lions caught gobbling endangered salmon on the Columbia River. The turnaround by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration came two months after the Humane Society of the United States filed a lawsuit challenging federal authorization of sea lion killings at the Bonneville Dam. “We’re delighted the agency has changed its mind and revoked the states’ authorization to kill hundreds of native sea lions for having the audacity to eat fish for dinner,” Humane Society lawyer Jonathan Lovvorn said in a statement.
UNITED STATES
Man attempts self-surgery
A Southern California man stuck a butter knife into his belly in a failed bid at self-surgery to remove a painful hernia, police said on Tuesday. The wife of the 63-year-old Glendale man called the emergency dispatcher on Sunday night and told the operator her husband was using a knife to remove a protruding hernia, Sergeant Tom Lorenz said. Officers found the man naked on a patio lounge chair outside his apartment with a 15cm butter knife sticking out of his stomach. While waiting for paramedics, the sergeant said, the man pulled out the knife and stuffed a cigarette he was smoking into the bleeding, open wound.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
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
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