MALAYSIA
Police rescue 21 Ugandans
Police say they have rescued 21 Ugandan women forced into prostitution and arrested three foreigners after raiding a sex slave ring. Criminal investigation chief Bakri Zinin said police found the women aged between 19 and 42 holed up in four apartment units in central Selangor State during a raid on Friday. He said three Ugandans — two women believed to be pimps and a man suspected of being a customer — had been detained. He said in a statement received yesterday that the 21 women were promised lucrative jobs as maids in homes and hotels, but instead were forced to become “sex slaves” to pay off travel fees and other costs totaling US$7,000.
MALAYSIA
Anwar testimony ends
Witnesses have finished testifying in opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim’s sodomy trial, but a verdict is not expected for at least six weeks. Opposition supporters fear Anwar could be imprisoned ahead of national elections widely expected by the middle of next year. He faces a 20-year sentence if convicted of sodomizing a 26-year-old male former aide in 2008. Authorities deny Anwar’s claim that the government concocted the charge. The High Court instructed lawyers to present closing arguments on Nov. 23 after the prosecution’s last witnesses provided statements yesterday. The prosecution’s case hinges on testimony by Anwar’s former aide and DNA evidence allegedly linking Anwar to the man. Anwar’s lawyers call the man a liar and say the DNA material is tainted.
PHILIPPINES
Unit to probe priest’s killing
A police official said a special unit has been created to investigate the killing of an Italian missionary priest in the country’s south. Investigators are seeking possible eyewitnesses. Chief Superintendent Lester Camba heads the special investigation group. He said yesterday that it would ask permission from Catholic officials to conduct an autopsy on Reverend Fausto Tentorio’s remains in hopes of recovering bullet fragments to identify the firearm used and its owner. A man shot Tentorio early on Monday within the compound in North Cotabato province and fled on a motorcycle driven by an accomplice.
HONG KONG
Airport worker convicted
An airport worker has been convicted of people smuggling for his part in helping a young Chinese asylum seeker board a flight to Canada disguised as an elderly Caucasian man. The unidentified Chinese national boarded a flight from Hong Kong to Vancouver in October last year wearing a detailed silicone mask, then removed the disguise in a washroom during the flight. The Hong Kong district court found on Monday that airport ground services worker Chau Pak-kin (鄒柏健) was guilty of taking part in a conspiracy to smuggle people with false passports and boarding passes. Chau is to be sentenced at a later date.
PAKISTAN
Troops killed in raid
Paramilitary forces have raided a militant hideout in a rugged tribal region near the Afghan border, sparking fighting that killed nine soldiers and 14 insurgents, officials said. Clashes are common in the area, but the death toll from the fighting on Monday was unusually high on the Pakistani side. The raid took place in the village of Akka Khel in the Khyber tribal area, said Farooq Khan, a senior local government official. Pakistan army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas confirmed the number of soldiers killed and said they were from the paramilitary Frontier Corps.
SWEDEN
Bird catcher sentenced
A man who captured 13,000 wild birds and kept hundreds of them locked up in his home has been convicted of animal cruelty and illegal hunting and sentenced to a year and a half in prison. The court said 39-year-old Pierre Johansson used illegal nets and traps to capture the birds, including owls, falcons, hawks, sparrows, pheasants and woodpeckers. After documenting his catch, he released most of them but the court said on Monday that Johansson also kept hundreds of birds locked up in cages in his garage and a hen house on his property. Johansson claims he wanted to give the birds shelter during the winter and never intended to harm them.
EGYPT
Mubareks’ money probed
The sons of former president Hosni Mubarak own assets worth US$340 million in Switzerland and might have been involved in money laundering, an official tasked with recouping ill-gotten gains from abroad said on Monday. Assem el-Gohari, head of the Illicit Gains Authority, said Switzerland had frozen Mubarak family assets worth US$450 million and that Swiss authorities were investigating accusations of money laundering by Alaa Mubarak and two other former regime figures.
MALAYSIA
Sea piracy surging
The Kuala Lumpur-based International Maritime Bureau says sea piracy worldwide has surged this year, with Somali pirates intensifying their operations and Benin emerging as a new hotspot. The bureau yesterday said there have been a record 352 attacks globally in the first nine months of the year, up 22 percent from a year ago. Somali pirates accounted for 199 attacks, a 58 percent increase. Benin has seen 19 attacks.
UNITED STATES
‘Designated driver’ was nine
A Michigan man had his nine-year-old daughter drive him to the store because he had apparently been drinking, police near Detroit said on Monday, and surveillance video from a gas station shows him telling a clerk that his daughter was his “designated driver.” Brownstown Township Detective Lieutenant Robert Grant said the girl was sitting behind the wheel in a child’s booster seat before 3am on Oct. 8, when an officer opened the driver’s side door of the panel van her father uses for work. He said she was surprised when police pulled her over. She said to the officer, “What did you stop me for? I was driving good,” Grant told the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News. Someone called police after spotting the pair stopped at the gas station.
CAMEROON
Opposition calls for protests
The opposition on Monday called for mass protests unless the Oct. 9 presidential ballot was annulled, saying it was rejecting the yet unannounced results of the “election masquerade.” “We reject ... any results announced by the Constitutional Court,” top opposition leader John Fru Ndi and six other candidates wrote in a statement dubbed the “Yaounde Declaration. The election is widely expected to return Paul Biya for a sixth term.
AUSTRIA
Foster abuse claims probed
Two women’s claims that they were raped along with other children at a public foster home for years in the 1970s will be investigated by an independent panel, Vienna city officials said on Monday. The head of a victims’ organization that interviewed the women said their allegations were believable.
‘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