INDONESIA
Tsunami victim finds family
A girl who was swept away in the Indian Ocean tsunami seven years ago has been reunited with her parents. Fifteen-year-old Wati showed up at a cafe in Meulaboh, a city in Aceh Province, earlier this week, saying she had been forced to work as a beggar and had finally broken free. She said she was looking for her family. Wati was led to a man named Ibrahim, her grandfather, who summoned her parents, Yusniar and Yusuf. The parents said they lost three daughters when the tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen nations slammed into their tiny village of Ujong Baroh. The mother, Yusniar, said she recognized Wati by the small scar over her eyebrow and a mole on her hip.
PHILIPPINES
Stewardesses dance again
Who says plane travel can’t be fun? Flight attendants for a low-cost airline who gained fame by dancing through safety demonstrations are back swaying through the aisles. They have swapped the Lady Gaga tunes that made them popular last year for Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You. Manila-based Cebu Pacific airline said the choreographed dance helped passengers pay more attention to the safety demonstration. “Now that it’s Christmas, we wanted to bring a little more fun into the flight,” Cebu Pacific spokeswoman Candice Iyog said on Thursday. Iyog said that their response has been good. Video of the routine shows four attendants in orange shirts and khaki shorts dancing away on select flights.
PORTUGAL
US extradition bid denied
A court has dismissed a US bid for the extradition of a fugitive killer and airplane hijacker arrested after 41 years on the run, Lusa news agency reported on Thursday. The US had filed an appeal last month, days after judges refused an extradition request on the grounds that 68-year-old George Wright had become a Portuguese citizen. Wright, arrested on Sept. 26, had been living in the country for 20 years at Almocageme, a village about 30km from the capital. He had changed his name to Jose Luis Jorge dos Santos and was married with two adult sons. US authorities had been searching for Wright since his escape in 1970 from a New Jersey prison, where was jailed for a 1962 murder. For two years after his escape, Wright disappeared into the Black Liberation Army, a black nationalist-Marxist organization. Then on July 31, 1972, he was among a group of five people who hijacked a Delta flight from Detroit to Miami. They demanded a US$1 million ransom for the passengers. When that was paid, they forced the plane to fly to Boston where it refueled and took another pilot hostage, then crossed the Atlantic to Algeria where they sought asylum.
UNITED KINGDOM
Pawn shops see gold lining
While much of London’s high street is shrouded in gloom as stores desperately cut prices, business is booming for the country’s largest pawnbroker, Harvey & Thompson. The company has benefited from a 15 percent increase in the price of gold over the past 12 months, which has taken the cost of an ounce to £1,031 (US$1,618), a rise of £138. Two years ago the company started opening new outlets called Gold Bars where people can take unwanted jewelry and other scrap gold and turn it into cash. It now has 53 outlets. The opening of Gold Bars followed heavy advertising by online scrap gold buyers that had a big impact on the market.
BRAZIL
Report details ‘ethnocide’
Lawmakers on Wednesday reported that an “ethnocide” is being committed against the Guarani Kaiowa people who occupy a tropical rainforest in the country’s central west. “The gunmen are the source of the Kaiowa ethnocide,” said the lawmakers, who visited areas of Mato Grosso do Sul State deemed to be most at risk from people determined to take land from the minority group. “The landowners solve land issues in their own way, with assassinations and massacres of the Indians,” the report said. Committee member Mariton de Holanda said the “indigenous people are being decimated” and called on President Dilma Rousseff to act.
MEXICO
Gunmen go on rampage
A group of gunmen attacked three passenger buses in Veracruz State on Thursday, killing seven passengers in what authorities said appeared to be a violent robbery spree. The defense department said in a statement that soldiers chased the five assailants and returned fire whey they were “attacked,” killing all of the gunmen. The army said the gunmen, who were carrying rifles, started the attacks in the pre-dawn hours of Thursday, killing three people who were loading vegetables into a truck in the town of El Higo. In the same town, they tossed a grenade that killed another person. Later, the gunmen went to a nearby highway, stopped and robbed a bus, and killed two of the passengers aboard, an army statement said. They later stopped another bus and sprayed it with gunfire, killing four passengers. When the driver of a third bus stopped to see what was happening, they killed him too.
UNITED STATES
WikiLeaks case adjourned
The case of an army private accused of creating the biggest national security leak in US history was adjourned on Thursday to wait for a decision on whether Bradley Manning would face a court-martial — and life in prison if found guilty. Military prosecutors and defense lawyers gave their closing arguments, with prosecutors saying the 19-year-old intelligence analyst defied the nation’s trust by pulling more than 700,000 documents from a supposedly secure computer network and giving reams of national secrets to WikiLeaks. The defense said the army had failed the troubled young soldier and was piling on the charges in an attempt to force him into pleading guilty.
BRAZIL
No surgery for twins
Doctors said on Thursday that they have decided for now not to attempt to surgically separate a set of conjoined twins who have two heads, but share one body and various vital organs. Doctor Neila Dahas of the Santa Casa de Misericordia Hospital in the northern town of Belem said in a statement that “it is impossible to take a decision with relation to surgery, not only because of physical reasons, but ethical ones as well.”
UNITED STATES
‘Geezer’ not so elderly?
The FBI says a bank robber dubbed the “Geezer Bandit” may not be as old as he appears. FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller says the robber, believed to be responsible for 16 holdups in California, may be wearing an elaborate costume. Witnesses have said that the robber appears to be wearing a mask and gloves. Investigators also point to a video of a robbery where a security dye-pack exploded as the robber was making his getaway, saying the speed with which the robber was able to run does not match his appearance of someone over 60 years old.
‘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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in