JAPAN
Donated cash left in toilet
An anonymous donor has left a wad of cash worth US$131,000 in a public toilet, with instructions it be used to help victims of the March earthquake and tsunami, an official said yesterday. A plastic shopping bag, containing ¥10 million, was found on Sept. 22 in a toilet for disabled people in the city hall of Sakado, a commuter town north of Tokyo, a city official said. The city will give the money to the Japanese Red Cross if the anonymous donor does not reclaim it within three months, city spokeswoman Masumi Sekiguchi said. She said a handwritten note was attached to the cash, reading: “I’m all alone. I have no future, so let the people in Tohoku use it.” Tohoku is the country’s northeast region devastated by the catastrophe that killed 20,000 people.
AFGHANISTAN
NATO troops, Afghans killed
Two Afghan policewomen and a civilian were killed by a mine on their way to work yesterday, a day after another five NATO soldiers died in the 10-year war against the Taliban. The policewomen and civilian died when their vehicle was blown up by a remote-controlled mine on their way to work at the civilian airport serving the western city of Herat, officials said.Three foreign soldiers were also killed by an improvised explosive device in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said, along with two others in separate incidents.
INDONESIA
Plane carrying 18 crashes
A small aircraft with 18 people on board crashed yesterday on Sumatra island, officials said. The Casa 212, carrying 15 passengers and three crew, left Medan city in North Sumatra at 7:18am bound for the nearby Aceh Province, before losing contact with air traffic control, transport ministry aviation head Herry Bakti said. “The plane crashed sometime between 7:28 and 8:05 this morning around Bohorok Mountain,” Bakti said. A search and rescue team has been dispatched to the site.
MYANMAR
Japanese tourist killed
A Japanese tourist has been killed and a motorcycle-taxi driver arrested on suspicion of her murder, a government official said yesterday. Chiharu Shiramatsu, 31, was killed on Wednesday near Kyaukpadaung, close to the ancient temple city of Bagan, after hiring the motorcycle taxi to go sightseeing, according to the authorities. “She was killed by a motorcycle-taxi driver who tried to rape her,” a government official who declined to be identified said. Min Theik, the 39-year-old motorcycle-taxi driver, was arrested at the scene. Violent crime involving foreign tourists is relatively rare in the country.
CHINA
Fugitive found in prison
A fugitive has been discovered working as a prison warden a decade after he went on the run to escape assault charges, the Beijing News reported yesterday. Wang Zhijia, 37, was accused of attacking his wife with a brick 10 years ago after the pair argued about a domestic issue. Police discovered this week that he was working at a prison in Anhui Province, the newspaper reported. Wang posed as his brother to get a job as an assistant with the police force in Anhui in 2008 and began working at the jail two months ago, it said. He was caught after police checks found that two people were using the same name and identity card number. Wang’s wife has since divorced him and married another man. She still suffers from headaches, amnesia and deafness, the report said.
BAHRAIN
Protester gets death
A man was sentenced to death on Wednesday for running over a policeman, and 20 doctors were jailed for between five and 15 years for stealing medicine and stockpiling weapons during unrest in the Gulf kingdom earlier this year, state news agency BNA said. Ali al-Tawil was convicted of killing the policeman and of joining illegal gatherings for “terrorist goals.” Another man was handed a life term for his involvement, BNA said. In a separate ruling, 20 physicians were jailed for forcefully occupying a hospital, spreading lies and false news, withholding treatment, inciting hatred of the rulers and calling for their overthrow. The doctors have repeatedly denied the charges, which they say were cooked up by the authorities to punish medical staff for treating people who took part in anti-government demonstrations.
RUSSIA
Number of poor grows
The number of people living below the poverty line has grown by about 2 million in the first six months of this year, new figures released by the state statistics service said. The total number of Russians living in poverty has reached 21.1 million at the end of June, up from 18.1 million last year. The share of the population living in poverty also grew to 14.9 percent from last year’s 12.8 percent, according to official figures. The poverty line was defined after the second quarter of this year at 6,505 rubles (US$204) per month per capita, up from 5,625 rubles in the same period last year. Inflation was 4.7 percent since the beginning of the year.
SAUDI ARABIA
Officials baffled about threat
Officials had no information about the threat that prompted the US embassy in Riyadh to issue a warning that a terrorist group may be planning to abduct Westerners in the capital, a government adviser said yesterday. “We have had no prior knowledge or warning about the intelligence that the US embassy is basing its warning on,” the adviser said, asking not to be named. The warning, posted on the embassy’s Web site on Wednesday, also advised US citizens living in the kingdom to carry out personal security measures to minimize the risk of abduction. A US diplomatic source said the warning was based on “solid information,” but that the embassy had no plans to reduce the hours it was open or repatriate any staff or family members.
KAZAKHSTAN
Religion law approved
The upper house of parliament approved a bill to tighten rules on the registration of religious groups yesterday, a move that critics say is a blow to freedom of belief in the former Soviet nation. The bill approved by the Senate requires existing religious organizations to dissolve and register again through a procedure that is virtually guaranteed to exclude smaller groups. Backers of the revised law on religion, including authoritarian President Nursultan Nazarbayev, say the legislation would help combat religious extremism in the mainly Muslim nation.
SWITZERLAND
Polanski picks up award
Roman Polanski returned to the Zurich Film Festival on Tuesday to accept the lifetime achievement award he was unable to pick up two years ago after being arrested for a decades-old sex-crime case. The Polish-French director was detained on arrival at Zurich airport in 2009 and subsequently spent months in prison and later under house arrest, before avoiding extradition to the US on charges of having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.
PERU
Mining tax to raise US$5.5bn
President Ollanta Humala has passed three new mining laws containing a tax hike aimed at raising US$5.5 billion over the next five years to be used for social spending. The laws passed on Wednesday fulfill a campaign pledge made by Humala before he assumed office two months ago to ensure that the country’s poor share in its recent economic success. “This will allow the state to have more resources to be used primarily for infrastructure in the poorest areas of the country, in order to bring about social inclusion,” Humala said at an official ceremony. The new legislation creates a new mining tax, modifies the law on mineral royalties and establishes a new legal framework for the industry.
MEXICO
US governors skip meeting
New Mexico is once again the only US state that sent its chief executive to an annual conference of governors from the Mexican and US states along the border. The 30-year-old annual conference began on Wednesday in Ensenada, Mexico, with New Mexico’s Susana Martinez the only one of four US governors there. Three of six Mexican border governors attended the opening ceremony. The poor turnout is fueling questions about whether the conference has lost its way. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer canceled last year’s gathering in Phoenix after Mexico’s border governors boycotted the event because she had just signed a tough law against illegal immigration. The conference ended yesterday.
UNITED STATES
West, Doritos to be buried
The man credited with creating Doritos will be buried along with some of his beloved snack chips, his family said on Tuesday. Arch West died on Sept. 20 of natural causes at a Dallas hospital. He was 97.
UNITED STATES
‘Cole’ suspect faces trial
The prime suspect in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole will be tried before a military tribunal in Guantanamo and face a possible death sentence if convicted, defense officials said on Wednesday. The Pentagon announced it had formally referred charges to the military commission against Abd al-Rahim Hussayn Muhammad al-Nashiri of Saudi Arabia, in the first new case to go to trial in Guantanamo since President Barack Obama took office in 2009. The Defense Department’s “Convening Authority referred the charges to a capital military commission, meaning that, if convicted, al-Nashiri could be sentenced to death,” it said. The charges against al-Nashiri allege he was in charge of the planning and preparation for the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen’s port of Aden on Oct. 12, 2000.
VENEZUELA
Chavez in hospital: report
President Hugo Chavez, who has been fighting cancer, was rushed to a military hospital for emergency care following kidney failure, Miami, Florida’s El Nuevo Herald newspaper reported late on Wednesday. The leftist, staunchly anti-US stalwart Chavez went into the Military Hospital in Caracas on Tuesday morning, the report on the newspaper’s Web site said, citing anonymous sources with knowledge of the case. “He was in fairly serious overall condition,” one of the sources told the Spanish-language daily. Venezuela’s Information Minister Andres Izarra appeared to deny the report in a posting on the micro-blogging Web site Twitter. “Those who should be admitted are the journalists of the Nuevo Herald, except into a madhouse [instead of a hospital],” Izarra tweeted, without providing further details.
‘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
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
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