AUSTRALIA
Man survives impalement
A man who impaled himself on a steel stake after falling from a rock showed “Bear Grylls” type grit to drag himself for 90 minutes and find help, paramedics said on Tuesday. Gary Walker, 45, tumbled from a lookout in Melbourne’s northwest on Monday, landing on a steel spike which pierced his upper thigh. Paramedic Cate Jones said he fainted from the intense pain, but when he woke up he used his belt as a tourniquet, pulled the stake from his leg and dragged himself up a steep 50m embankment to call for help. His exploits saw him likened to celebrity survivalist Bear Grylls, the English adventurer whose Man vs Wild television show has become one of the most-watched shows around the world. “He’s certainly shown some Bear Grylls characteristics in removing himself from a very difficult situation,” paramedic Louise Wylie told reporters, adding that the man had first-aid training. “The man used his belt as a tourniquet and then pulled the stake from his leg,” she said. “The man didn’t have his phone with him so he had to drag himself back to the car park which took about one-and-a-half hours.”
THAILAND
Land mine injures elephant
Veterinarians say a 22-year-old elephant was wounded after he wandered into neighboring Myanmar and stepped on a land mine. Soraida Salwala of the Friends of the Asian Elephant conservation group in northern Thailand says the pachyderm’s left foot was severely hurt in Sunday’s blast in Myanmar’s Kayin State. Salwala said Tuesday that the elephant named Pa Hae Po was taken to the group’s hospital in the Thai town of Lampang by truck and is expected to recover. The elephant is the 14th such casualty to be treated at the hospital since 1993.
INDIA
Ten die in train crash
A passenger train collided with another train stopped at a signal in southern India, killing 10 people and injuring dozens more, police said yesterday. Five train cars derailed in Tuesday’s accident, about 80km southwest of Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu State, said Shalendra Babu, a senior police official. By early yesterday, the death toll stood at 10, police official K.M. Babu said. Another 52 people were injured, he added. S. Nagarajan, the district administrator, said rains initially hampered rescue efforts but all the injured had been moved to hospitals. The accident’s cause was being investigated, Railways Minister Dinesh Trivedi said.
JAPAN
Small boat spotted at sea
A boat thought to be carrying nine North Koreans attempting to flee their country, including three children, has been spotted off the western coast, reports said on Tuesday. The small wooden fishing vessel, which has Korean writing on the side, was seen drifting around 25km off the Noto peninsula of Ishikawa Prefecture. Jiji press, citing the transport ministry, said local fishermen had alerted authorities to the presence of the boat at around 7am. The agency said a coast guard plane and a vessel had been dispatched and were on their way to rescue those on board, who were believed to be from three families. The private TBS television network said the coast guard planned to tow the boat, which had six adults and three children aboard, to the port of Kanazawa. Both TBS and national broadcaster NHK said it was believed those aboard were from North Korea. A coast guard spokesman confirmed only that “an unidentified” boat had been seen in the area.
MEXICO
Police injured in shootout
A shootout on Tuesday outside Colima University in the west of the country between federal police and a state officer left two police injured and caused panic in classrooms. The shootout started after the state officer fired into the air while resisting arrest for suspected links with organized crime, the attorney general’s office said in a statement. One federal officer and the state officer were injured, while a stray bullet shattered the window of a classroom, it said. Classes were suspended for about two hours, the university said.
CANADA
Union votes to strike
Air Canada faces its second work stoppage this year after flight attendants overwhelmingly endorsed a strike that could begin as early as Wednesday. The Union of Public Employees said on Tuesday that after a 10-day vote, members voted 98 percent to back a strike. Unless a last-minute deal is reached, 6,800 flight attendants could walk off the job next week. That would mark the airline’s second labor disruption in three months. About 3,800 customer sales and service representatives represented by the Auto Workers union held a three-day strike in June.
PERU
State of emergency declared
A 60-day state of emergency was ordered in the rural districts of Cholon, Monzon, and Leoncio Prado in the Amazon region on Tuesday, citing the presence of drug traffickers and rebels, but also amid strikes and protests by coca growers who complain of “forced eradication” of their crops. Officials said the emergency was intended to “protect the population” from trafficking groups profiting from illegal coca cultivation and from remnants of the Shining Path guerrilla movement. However, hundreds of farmers in the areas started an indefinite strike on Sunday and blocked a major highway connecting Ucayali Department, about 600km northeast of Lima, with the rest of the country, to protest what they said was the “forced eradication” of their crops.
MEXICO
Social networkers warned
The bloodstained bodies of a man and a woman were found hanging from a bridge in the northeast of the country on Tuesday, along with threatening messages to people who report drug violence on social networks. The messages lay near the two bodies, found half naked, alluding to Web sites set up for people to report drug violence in the area, police said. “That will happen to all of them,” read the text of one message signed with the letter “Z,” usually associated with the Zetas drug gang. Nuevo Laredo lies in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, on the US border, where the Zetas are blamed for many violent attacks. Citizens in the area often rely on social networks for information about shootouts or other drug violence.
UNITED STATES
Persecution rising: report
A State Department review of religious freedom around the world says that persecution has worsened in China and Afghanistan. The report released on Tuesday also criticized Pakistan for failing to reform a blasphemy law. Other Asian governments chided include Myanmar, Vietnam and Laos. The report claims that in China, Uighur Muslims and Tibetan Buddhist religious leaders report increased discrimination. In Afghanistan, it says the government has failed to protect Christian converts, while minority Hindus and Sikhs also face persecution.
The report covers the second half of last year.
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
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
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