THAILAND
Death ‘rehearsals’ offered
For those facing a run of bad luck and wanting to start things over, one temple has an unusual solution: “rehearse” death with a mock funeral, including lying down in a coffin. Pram Manee temple in Nakorn Nayok Province holds two of the rituals every day: at exactly 9:09am and 1:09pm, since the number nine is believed to bring good luck. Participants in a recent ritual stood in front of their designated coffins, holding flowers and praying for bad luck to go away, then asked to receive good luck. All had paid 180 baht (US$6) for the flowers, a white sheet and “merit set” — a collection of necessities sometimes including toothpaste, toothbrushes and food — to be offered to monks and the promise of a better life.
NORTH KOREA
Annual Arirang games begin
Thousands gathered in Pyongyang for the opening of the Arirang mass games, an annual spectacle celebrating the country’s leaders and history, even as their nation suffers from chronic food shortages and asks other nations for aid. Monday night’s opening performance took place on the 63rd anniversary of the nation’s founding with hundreds of thousands of people taking part in carefully choreographed dances and gymnastics displays, KCNA said. The Arirang performances will continue for more than a month.
MALAYSIA
Bludgeoning suspects caught
Police yesterday said they have detained two people on suspicion of bludgeoning a man to death after he reportedly posted negative remarks about a girl he had “friended” on Facebook. “The two men are in a police lock-up. They are being investigated for murder,” a senior police official in Kedah state familiar with the case said on condition of anonymity. Twenty-year-old Mohamad Amran Romli died in hospital on Friday shortly after sustaining severe head injuries in an attack by two men believed to be brothers of the girl, the Malay-language Berita Harian daily said. The two men beat Amran with motorcycle helmets in an alley behind a supermarket in Kulim town in Kedah, it said. Local police chief Ghuzlan Saleh was quoted as saying that Amran had befriended the girl through Facebook. However, their online relationship eventually “turned sour” and the victim allegedly posted disparaging comments about the girl and her family.
CHINA
Man sorry for killing NZ man
A man has apologized for killing a New Zealand taxi driver and asked for leniency during a hearing at a court in Shanghai. Twenty-four-year-old Xiao Zhen was arrested last year in China and charged with the murder of Auckland taxi driver Hiren Mohini in New Zealand in January last year. Yesterday, Xiao told Shanghai’s Second Intermediate Court that he was guilty and asked the court to consider his young age and that he had no prior criminal record. The court has not formally convicted him. The case marks the first time a person accused of a murder in New Zealand has been tried in another country.
PAKISTAN
Ramadan begins day later
The Muslim fasting month of Ramadan was to begin in the country yesterday, it was officially announced. “The crescent moon has been sighted in several cities and towns” across the country, including Islamabad and Karachi, late on Monday, said Muneeb-ur Rehman, chairman of the state moon-sighting committee. Ramadan in the country starts one day after Saudi Arabia because local authorities did not confirm sighting the new moon on Sunday.
UNITED KINGDOM
Women get bras all twisted
A British attempt to set a new world record for the longest chain of brassieres was called off after volunteers got the lingerie in a twist. Campaigners at “Bra Chain” hoped to hook together more than 161km of bras in Worcester to raise money for women’s charities and beat the current world record of 166,000 linked brassieres, held by Australia. Volunteers, or “hookers,” aimed to connect 200,000 bras, but were forced to quit at half that number when the bras became tangled in the boxes. “We underestimated the time it would take to get the bras out of their boxes and hooked together — there were bras all over the place,” Launa Walker at Bra Chain said.
UNITED STATES
Polygamist linked to child
A forensic analyst in Texas says DNA evidence shows with 99.99 percent certainty that a polygamist religious leader fathered a child with a 15-year-old girl. Warren Jeffs is head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which believes polygamy brings exaltation in heaven. He faces charges of sexual assault with two underage girls and, if convicted, could go to jail for life. Amy Smuts, of the Human Identification Center at the University of North Texas, testified on Monday that Jeffs’ DNA had 15 markers match a DNA sample taken from a girl born to a 15-year-old mother. She said that made her more than 99.99 percent certain Jeffs was the child’s father.
UNITED KINGDOM
European men linked to Tut
Up to 70 percent of British men and half of all Western European men are related to the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun, geneticists in Zurich, Switzerland, said. Scientists at the DNA genealogy center iGENEA reconstructed the DNA profile of the boy pharaoh, his father, Akhenaten, and grandfather Amenhotep III, based on a film that was made for the Discovery Channel. The results showed that King Tut belonged to a genetic profile group, known as haplogroup R1b1a2, to which more than 50 percent of all men in Western Europe belong, indicating that they share a common ancestor. Less than 1 percent of modern-day Egyptians belong to this haplogroup, iGENEA said.
FRANCE
Shark spotted in harbor
A professional diver working in the harbor of Saint-Tropez saw a large shark swim by him three times over the weekend, the Var-Matin reported on Monday. Nicolas Faucon told the newspaper he was underwater untangling the anchor chains when a 2m long shark glided past him at arm’s length. “A shark passed by 50cm from me. I am 100 percent sure of it,” Faucon told the paper. Faucon made a swift exit, but said he saw the shark again when he went back underwater an hour later, and he spotted it again, further away, the following day.
UNITED STATES
‘Grim Sleeper’ faces death
Los Angeles prosecutors on Monday said they would seek the death penalty against a man accused of the “Grim Sleeper” serial killings. Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman told a court her office will ask a jury for the state’s harshest sentence if 58-year-old Lonnie Franklin Jr is convicted. Franklin has pleaded not guilty to the murders of 10 women and one count of attempted murder. Most of the victims linked to the “Grim Sleeper” were found in alleyways within a few kilometers of Franklin’s home south of downtown Los Angeles.
UNITED STATES
‘Actor’ carjacks police
Pittsburgh police say a man tried to carjack a plainclothes officer near filming for the latest Batman movie — and allegedly told him it was part of the script. Detective Robert DiGiacomo was in an unmarked vehicle around 7:15pm on Saturday, looking for a suspect in an assault. That is when police say a man opened the car door, sat down and told the officer to get out. The officer drew his gun and ordered the suspect, 21-year-old Micah Calamosca, out of the car. He says the suspect told him he was part of filming for The Dark Knight Rises and that taking the vehicle was in the script. Calamosco was taken into custody and faces a charge of robbery of a motor vehicle. It is unclear if he has an attorney.
MEXICO
Polling workers go missing
Investigators were searching on Monday for six employees of a polling company who disappeared over the weekend in a violence-wracked area in the west. The Consulta Mitofsky employees had been working in Apatzingan, Michoacan State, where the Knights Templar and La Familia drug gangs are known to operate. Three “employees were carrying out surveys, but they didn’t return with the rest of the group. Another three went deep into a community and we don’t have news of them, either,” a spokesman from the state attorney general’s office said, declining to be named.
UNITED STATES
Woman kills man with heel
Authorities say a woman struck her boyfriend in the head with a stiletto heel and killed him. Richmond County sheriff’s Captain Scott Peebles said on Monday that 46-year-old Thelma Carter of Augusta, Georgia, is charged with murder in the death of 58-year-old Robert Higdon. Authorities say they believe Higdon was killed sometime on Sunday evening after a dispute between the two inside their home. Peebles told the Augusta Chronicle that police recovered the body on Monday morning after Carter returned and notified them. Authorities said an autopsy was scheduled for yesterday.
MEXICO
Top prosecutors resign
The top federal prosecutors in 21 of the country’s 31 states and federal districts have resigned, the Attorney General’s Office announced on Monday. The prosecutors quit on Friday, state office coordinator Rosa Elena Torres Davila said. It was the largest mass resignation in the agency’s recent history and came a week after the department had announced that 111 of its staff had been charged with crimes and 192 more fired for botching cases. However, officials did not provide any explanation for the resignations or say if they were connected to the internal purge that has been ongoing since Attorney General Marisela Morales took office in April.
UNITED STATES
Cocaine-filled sub caught
The coast guard says its crews helped stop a -submarine-like craft filled with US$180 million of cocaine in the western Caribbean. The coast guard said on Monday that a cutter found the semi--submersible craft on July 13 off the coast of Honduras near the Nicaraguan border. Officials say it was found with the help of a Customs and Border Protection airplane. The watercraft sank, but it was found yesterday after several searches by the coast guard, FBI dive teams and the Honduran Navy. An FBI dive team recovered nearly 6.8 tonnes of cocaine, which were turned over to law enforcement.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
‘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