MALAYSIA
Wife kidnaps mistress
A woman has been arrested for allegedly kidnapping her husband’s mistress for several days. The enraged wife was arrested on Tuesday in a suburb of the capital, Kuala Lumpur, local district police chief Abdul Rahim Abdullah said. The victim was found and freed a few hours later. “According to investigations, the wife and her brother had found the man’s mistress and made him listen while the two tortured and beat up the mistress. The wife met her husband on Sunday and showed him pictures of his lover, who appeared to be tied up,” he said. “She also demanded a 50,000 ringgit [US$16,800] ransom if he wanted to see the mistress again.”
AUSTRALIA
House fire kills 11 people
An overnight house fire has killed 11 people, including eight children, from two families, officials said yesterday. Three people managed to escape the fire, which broke out in the two-story home around midnight in Logan City, south of the Queensland state capital of Brisbane, police Superintendent Noel Powers said. The fire began underneath the house, but the cause was not immediately known. Eight children and teenagers were among the dead, with the youngest victim aged 3, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said.
SOUTH KOREA
Boobs fondled in check-up
Would-be flight attendants have accused Indonesia’s national airline of making them strip and having their breasts handled in medical check-ups. Several dozen candidates for 18 highly coveted female flight attendant positions with Garuda Indonesia were required to strip down to their panties to screen out those with tattoos or breast implants, one applicant said. “The hand examination on breasts was held since those with implants can have health issues when air pressure falls during flights,” Yonhap news agency quoted an airline official as saying. “We are investigating the matter by questioning managers and the doctor who was in charge of the checkup ... This is very embarrassing,” Park Sung-hyun said.
AFGHANISTAN
Third official assassinated
A local government official has been assassinated in southern Afghanistan — the third official killed in Helmand Province in a week, officials said yesterday. The governor’s office in Helmand said two gunmen on a motorcycle fired at a member of the Nawa district council on Tuesday evening in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital. The councilman was rushed to a hospital but died of his wounds. Also in the south, Afghan and NATO forces discovered 1,000kg of marijuana seeds and 1,500kg of hashish while patrolling in Zhari district of Kandahar Province. The drugs were destroyed by coalition forces.
HONG KONG
Court to rule on residency
A court will rule next month whether foreign maids are allowed to settle permanently in the territory, it said yesterday as the hearing into a landmark case wrapped up. The action by Evangeline Banao Vallejos, a Philippine domestic helper who has lived in the territory since 1986 but was denied permanent residency, has cast a spotlight on the financial hub’s treatment of its army of foreign maids. High Court judge Johnson Lam said he will deliver a decision by the end of next month, Vallejos’ lawyer Peter Barnes said. The ruling will be crucial as Vallejos’ legal battle is the first of five launched by Filipinos who have filed similar lawsuits.
ISRAEL
Airstrike targets Gaza
The military said its aircraft struck two Gaza militants who fired mortars at southern parts of the country. It said the militants were hit yesterday shortly after the mortar attacks. There was no immediate word from Gaza on casualties. Earlier yesterday, a separate airstrike killed a militant from the Islamic Jihad faction, according to Hamas security officials. The military said the man had smuggled weapons into Gaza and was involved in militant activity in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, near the southern border. It did not elaborate.
ISRAEL
Court upholds wall location
The Supreme Court rejected a Palestinian village’s appeal to reroute a section of the West Bank separation barrier straddling the Jerusalem municipal border, saying the petitioners did not prove the barrier would smother the village. Residents of Walajeh village had claimed the path of the section under construction would cut them off from their farmlands, cemetery and water source. The government says the barrier, which at multiple points dips inside the West Bank, is crucial to keep out Palestinian attackers. The planned barrier would completely encircle the village by a fence, cutting it off from most of its open land, according to an Defense Ministry map.
AUSTRIA
Woman climbs 14 summits
Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner on Tuesday became the first woman to conquer all 14 8,000m summits without artificial oxygen, when she reached the top of K2, her team announced. Kaltenbrunner, 40, is only the third woman to climb all 14 highest summits, but the first to do so without artificial oxygen. She had already attempted the 8,611m K2, on the border between China and Pakistan, six times before, but had to turn back each time before the summit. The team had set off on this expedition more than two months ago, with the plan to attack K2 — the world’s second-tallest mountain — from the Chinese north side for the first time. Kaltenbrunner had so far only attempted the summit from the Pakistani side.
GERMANY
Woman flees abductor
Police say they discovered a telephone booth, a homemade grenade, 113 fire extinguishers, gynecological implements and syringes in a Hamburg apartment as they investigated a suspected kidnapping. Officials say the suspect forced a 26-year-old Israeli woman to go to his apartment at gunpoint on Friday evening. The woman escaped about three hours later by jumping out of the window, over which the suspect had stretched barbed wire. Neighbors called police and the man was arrested at his apartment. Police spokesperson Jens Ratfeld said yesterday the 30-year-old suspect so far has given no information to investigators. Media have speculated that the telephone booth was intended as a torture chamber, but police say they cannot confirm that.
UNITED KINGDOM
King Arthur loses court case
A druid named King Arthur on Tuesday failed in his legal bid to have ancient human remains returned to a burial site at Stonehenge. The self-styled druid, who appeared in white robes as he represented himself at the High Court in London, wanted judges to review a government decision to allow experts to keep the remains for testing. The remains of more than 40 bodies, thought to be at least five centuries old, were removed in 2008 from the burial site. King Arthur said he feared they would be placed in a museum instead of being returned.
MEXICO
Bike comments stir row
Mexico City’s top environment official is describing as “backward” comments by a radio host who called on motorists to run over bicycle riders. City Environment Secretary Martha Delgado says such incitement to violence was “an attack on the cycling community and the citizens of Mexico City.” The city encourages bicycle use to cut down on traffic and pollution in the metropolis of 20 million. Radio host Angel Verdugo said on Tuesday during his program on the Reporte 98.5 station that cyclists had almost run into his car and were ignoring traffic rules and bothering pedestrians. Verdugo called on motorists to “run your vehicles at them immediately, don’t give them time to think, and crush them.”
MEXICO
Man hung, shot to death
Gunmen hung a man from a pedestrian bridge over a busy avenue in Monterrey on Tuesday and shot him to death in front of dozens of motorists. A police investigator in Nuevo Leon state, where Monterrey is located, said the man was alive when he was hung and died after being shot. The investigator, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case, said the assailants left a threatening message, but he wouldn’t reveal what it said. Also on Tuesday in the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco, two teenage boys of about 15 years of age were shot to death by unidentified assailants. Police also found a man’s dismembered body in a car in another Acapulco neighborhood.
BAHAMAS
Irene bears down on islands
A strengthened Hurricane Irene bore down on the Bahamas yesterday, churning on a track that could see it slam the US as an even stronger storm later in the week. Irene packed winds of 155kph, leading the Miami-based US National Hurricane Center (NHC) to upgrade it to a Category 2 storm on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale. The center of Irene was located north of Haiti’s northern coastline over the British overseas territory of Turks and Caicos, 650km southeast of Nassau, the NHC said. The storm is forecast to strike the southeastern US coastline near the Carolinas over the weekend.
UNITED STATES
Couple settle dispute
A Michigan man is rejoining his wife in Japan after they settled a custody dispute over their eight-year-old son. A hearing in Macomb County Circuit Court in the Detroit suburb of Mount Clemens was canceled on Tuesday after the agreement. Carl and Mayumi Mueller wed in Japan in 2002. He says he took their son from Japan to China, in part because of the couple’s faltering relationship.
UNITED STATES
Victim’s remains identified
New York City forensic technicians are still identifying pieces of human remains found in the rubble of the World Trade Center nearly a decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The office of New York City’s medical examiner announced on Tuesday that it had successfully matched a set of remains to 40-year-old Ernest James of New York, who had been assumed dead in the collapse. A spokeswoman says James was identified within the last few days through DNA testing. He worked for the professional services company Marsh & McLennan, which lost more than 350 employees and consultants. The company was located on the 88th floor of the North Tower, the first building struck by hijackers. Authorities have identified the remains of 1,629 victims.
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
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
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the