THAILAND
Policeman shoots colleagues
A policeman in southern Phatthalung province shot dead six fellow officers before turning the gun on himself after a drinking session in a police canteen turned sour, local police said yesterday. The incident, which also left one policeman severely wounded, took place late on Monday in a border patrol police camp about 840km south of the capital Bangkok. “Seven men were found dead including the gunman and one man has critical injuries,” Phatthalung police investigator Lieutenant Colonel Prasit Singhapol said by telephone. Prasit said the motive was still unknown, but the eight men had been drinking together in the canteen where six of the bodies were found. “At this stage we think it’s a personal conflict,” he said. The gunman’s body was found about 200m from the scene after he killed himself with the same assault rifle he used against his colleagues, Prasit said.
INDONESIA
Mount Lokon erupts
One of the country’s most active volcanoes erupted yesterday, spewing clouds of ash and panicking villagers, but no evacuation has been ordered so far, a government vulcanologist said. The first eruption at Mount Lokon was at 3:07am, followed by two more bursts within minutes, Farid Bina said from a monitoring post near the volcano on the island of Sulawesi. “The eruption was heard as far as 5km away, causing panic among villagers living close to the volcano,” he said, adding that winds blew volcanic ash to villages up to 5km to the east and northeast. “Two villages with about 10,000 people each have been affected by the ash, which stopped later in the morning,” he added. More than 5,200 people were evacuated to temporary shelters when the 1,580m volcano erupted in July, sending huge clouds of ash as high as 3,500m into the sky.
CHINA
GPS rival launched
A rival to the US global positioning system (GPS) network has started providing services throughout the nation and the surrounding area. The director of the satellite navigation system office, Ran Chengqi (冉承其), told reporters yesterday that the Beidou navigation system is offering services including positioning, navigation routes and time. Ran did not specify who the target users are, but he said Beidou would be available to local and foreign companies for research and development. Beidou will be available to much of the Asian-Pacific region by the end of next year and worldwide by 2020. Beijing, and especially its military, have long been wary of relying on the US’ dominant GPS network, fearing that Washington might take the system offline in a conflict or an emergency.
JAPAN
TEPCO asks for more aid
Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) yesterday asked for an extra US$8.5 billion in aid from a government-backed fund to help it compensate families affected by the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant crisis. The request, if granted, would bring the total amount of aid the utility has sought from the Nuclear Damage Compensation Facilitation Corp up to ¥1.7 trillion (US$21 billion) from a previous ¥1.01 trillion. TEPCO said the increase results from government moves to widen eligibility criteria for claimants and to alter the evacuation zone restrictions around the stricken plant, which was hit by the huge waves of March 11. The decisions have increased both the amount of compensation the firm is liable for and the number of people entitled to claim, it said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Indian student shot dead
An Indian student was shot dead on Monday in Manchester, England, by a white man, police said, announcing an investigation. Anuj Bidve, 23, was murdered in the early hours as he walked with friends from his hotel in Salford, an area to the west of Manchester, toward the city center. Greater Manchester Police called it an “awful” and “unprovoked” attack, and vowed their investigation would “leave no stone unturned.” “This is a tragic incident and our first thoughts are for the family,” chief superintendent Kevin Mulligan said. “There is going to be a huge amount of concern in the community, and I can reassure the family and the community by telling them we have launched a major investigation, and no stone will be left unturned until we find the people who are responsible for this.” Bidve’s family in India has been informed.
ITALY
Anti-mafia priest targeted
An explosive device has gone off outside a center for young migrants that is headed by a crusading anti-mafia priest. ANSA news agency said no one was hurt and the Center South’s doorway in Lamezia Terme was only slightly damaged. The center is housed in a building confiscated from the ‘ndrangheta mafia, based in Italy’s Calabria region. The center’s founder, Reverend Giacomo Panizza, said the attempted intimidation would not stop his efforts. Separately on Monday, an explosive device went off outside the offices of Italy’s tax collection agency in Olbia, Sardinia, causing no injuries, ANSA said.
FINLAND
Strong winds batter country
As many as 200,000 people were without power yesterday as strong winds battered the country, felling trees over power lines and causing damage to buildings. Gusts of wind exceeded 108kph at the Helsinki-Vantaa airport, the Finnish Meteorological Institute said on its Web site. The winds were easing as the storm headed east, the institute said. Fortum Oyj had 140,000 customers without power and Vattenfall AB said 50,000 customers had no electricity, the companies Web sites said.
ETHIOPIA
Swedish journalists jailed
A court sentenced two Swedish journalists to 11 years in prison yesterday for helping and promoting the outlawed Ogaden National Liberation Front rebel group and entering the country illegally, a judge said. “The court has sentenced both defendants to 11 years. We have heard both cases ... and we believe this is an appropriate sentence,” Judge Shemsu Sirgaga told the court. Reporter Martin Schibbye and photographer Johan Persson were arrested in July after they entered Ogaden Province from Somalia’s semi-autonomous Puntland region with a team of rebel fighters.
UNITED KINGDOM
Prince leaves hospital
Britain’s Prince Philip left the hospital yesterday after undergoing treatment for a blocked coronary artery. Philip, Queen Elizabeth II’s 90-year-old husband, spent four nights at the hospital recovering from a successful coronary stent procedure. He was taken to Papworth, a specialist heart hospital in Cambridge, on Friday after complaining of chest pains. It was the most serious health scare suffered by Philip, who is known to be active and robust. For the first time in years he was forced to miss the royal family’s traditional Christmas festivities, which include attending a morning church service, viewing the queen’s annual Christmas broadcast and a shooting party on Boxing Day.
CHILE
Recipe burns newspaper
Chile’s Supreme Court has ordered a newspaper to pay US$125,000 to 13 people who suffered burns while trying out a published recipe for churros, a popular Latin American snack of dough fried in hot oil. The publisher of La Tercera must pay individual damages to 11 women and two men ranging from as little as US$279 to US$48,000 for one woman whose burns were particularly severe. The ruling was made on Monday, seven years after the readers burned themselves while trying out the recipe. Judges determined that the newspaper failed to fully test it before publication and that if readers followed the recipe exactly, the churros had a good chance of exploding once the oil reached the suggested temperature. Days after the recipe was published in the paper’s Woman magazine in 2004, hospitals around the country began treating women for burns suffered when the dough boiling in oil suddenly shot out of kitchen pots.
UNITED STATES
Goat escapes Christmas
A goat that apparently didn’t want to be part of a Minnesota Nativity scene has headed for greener pastures. The three-year-old Angora goat was supposed to have a supporting role at Bethlehem Church in Fergus Falls. Instead it escaped its leash on Saturday afternoon and remained on the lam on Monday. The goat’s owner says he tried to chase it for about two hours, but the lack of snow made tracking difficult. A Fergus Falls Journal report says the owner also provided a llama and two puppies for the service.
UNITED STATES
Finder not a keeper
A Colorado man who found US$10,000 before boarding a flight in Las Vegas says he returned the money to the owner because he wanted to show his children it was “the right thing to do.” Greenwood Village resident Mitch Gilbert told KUSA-TV he found two unmarked Caesars Palace envelopes at the airport and realized there was money inside when he arrived home. The TV station reported on Monday that Gilbert called the airport and eventually got in touch with a man from El Paso, Texas, who reported the money missing. The man told the TV station he won the money gambling and dropped it while running to catch a flight.
MEXICO
Soy sauce kills addicts
Medical officials say five recovering drug addicts died and dozens of others were sickened by soy sausage served for Christmas dinner at a rehabilitation center. Authorities were investigating whether the poisoning at the center in the city of Guadalajara was accidental or intentional. Alhy Daniel Nunez is a spokesman for the Red Cross in Jalisco State, where Guadalajara is located. He said on Monday that 37 people remained hospitalized, three of them in serious condition.
MEXICO
Policemen caught for torture
Mexican authorities arrested five policemen on Monday on suspicion of torture after a video was made public showing police officers submerging a detainee’s head in a bucket of water. An official at the attorney general’s office said five Mexico City police officers were taken into custody over the alleged torture, which took place in the capital’s tough inner city neighborhood of Tepito last month. Soon after the incident, a video was posted on the Internet showing a man with his shirt pulled over his head being dunked in a bucket of water while in the custody of a unit of well-armed policemen.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in 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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was