MALAYSIA
Bad translation mangles site
The defense ministry yesterday blamed the use of Google Translate for the mangled English that appeared on its Web site sparking online ridicule. The translations from Malay into English included dress guidelines for ministry staff that prohibited “clothes that poke eye” — a reference to revealing attire. Another section of the ministry’s Web site said that after the 1957 independence from Britain, the new government took “drastic measures to increase the level of any national security threat.” Snickering people passed the bungled translations around via social networking sites. The passages have since been removed from site.
NEW ZEALAND
Baby abductor charged
A woman who fooled her family into believing she was pregnant has been charged with abduction after allegedly walking into a hospital and stealing a newborn baby, police said yesterday. Neha Narayan was arrested after she was found with the baby heading for the hospital car park where her partner was waiting to take her home with what he believed was their own child. Police spokeswoman Ana-Mari Gates-Bowey told reporters Narayan faked her pregnancy for nine months before telling her partner to drop her off at Auckland’s Middlemore hospital as she was due to give birth. Inside the hospital, the 24-year-old was able to roam the maternity ward. At one stage she was found holding a baby, which she said she was comforting, and later she was handed a baby by a hospital staff member who believed she was the mother, Gates-Bowey said.
CHINA
Wen to visit Middle East
Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) will this week visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, the foreign ministry said yesterday, amid mounting international tensions over oil-rich Iran. The country is under pressure to secure the energy supplies it needs to keep its booming economy going. Wen will hold talks with leaders of the three Arab nations and attend the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi during his six-day trip, foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin (劉為民) said in a statement.
MALAYSIA
Smuggled tusks seized
The government seized elephant tusks worth 2.4 million ringgit (US$760,000) from South Africa in the first haul of smuggled ivory destined for the Southeast Asian country, officials said yesterday. The tusks, weighing about 500kg, were discovered during inspections at the busy Port Klang in Selangor state, Azis Yacub, the state’s customs director, said in a statement. Recently, the country has seized several large shipments of African ivory, but all were destined for other countries, making Friday’s haul “an unusual development,” according to wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC.
INDONESIA
Man dies of H5N1
A 24-year-old man infected with bird flu died in Jakarta, the health ministry said yesterday, in the country’s third fatal case in three months. “Test results from the man who died confirmed that he was infected with bird flu,” health ministry head of communicable diseases Tjandra Yoga Aditama said. The man likely contracted the H5N1 avian influenza virus from pet pigeons living around his house, Aditama said. The Jakarta Post reported that the man died on Saturday after being rejected by a hospital specializing in bird flu and had on New Year’s Eve been misdiagnosed by two other hospitals with a gastric infection and dengue fever.
Agencies
UNITED KINGDOM
Celebrity sorry for stealing
A celebrity chef has apologized after he was caught shoplifting from a supermarket. Antony Worrall Thompson was caught stealing cheese and wine from a Tesco store in Henley-on-Thames, west of London. In a statement posted on his Web site on Monday, the 60-year-old said he was sorry “for all my recent stupid and irresponsible actions.” He said he would seek treatment and apologized to Tesco staff. The Sun newspaper reported that he stole cheese and wine. Thames Valley Police issued Worrall Thompson with a formal caution — a written rebuke for a crime. Worrall Thompson will not face further charges, but the caution can be mentioned in court if he offends again.
GREECE
Picasso stolen from gallery
A Pablo Picasso painting gifted to the country by the Spanish-born master was stolen from the National Gallery in Athens early on Monday with two other important artworks, prompting scorn from the police minister. Woman’s Head, a 1939 oil on canvas, had been given by Picasso to the state in 1949 in recognition of the country’s resistance to Nazi Germany, police said in a statement. The back of the painting reads in French: “For the Greek people, a tribute by Picasso.” Mill, a 1905 oil painting of a windmill by Dutch abstract artist Piet Mondrian, was also stolen, along with a sketch of St Diego de Alcala by 16th--century Italian artist Guglielmo Caccia, better known as Moncalvo, police said. “I am very sorry, because an artwork of huge value was stolen,” Citizen’s Protection Minister Christos Papoutsis told reporters, referring to the Picasso. Papoutsis termed the gallery’s security arrangements “non-existent” and noted that a private security company hired to supplement the building’s sole guard “took hours” to respond to the break-in.
LIBYA
Suspect arrested for murder
Authorities have arrested a suspect in the killing of a French former serviceman in Tripoli, LANA news agency reported on Monday, saying the murder had no political motive. LANA, citing the interior ministry, said Mohammed al-Kurdi, 28, had been arrested as the “suspected killer” for the murder of former serviceman Hugues de Samie. “The [arrested] criminal is a drug addict and his motive was theft. There are no political motives,” LANA said. “The interior ministry said there were no political motives behind the murder of the French citizen in the Zawiet al-Dahmani neighborhood of Tripoli.” The French foreign ministry on Monday confirmed the killing of de Samie, 60, who had a long military career.
NIGERIA
Three killed in general strike
Trade unions began a second day of nationwide strikes yesterday to protest against the removal of fuel subsidies, as President Goodluck Jonathan and workers remain in deadlock after three people were killed on the first day of demonstrations. The fuel regulator announced on Jan. 1 that subsidies on imports of motor fuel would end immediately, more than doubling the price of gasoline to about 150 naira (US$0.93) a liter and sparking protests across the country. Police shot dead at least two protesters and wounded more than two dozen on Monday after firing live ammunition and tear gas to disperse protesters in the commercial hub Lagos and the largest northern city of Kano. Tens of thousands marched the streets in demonstrations up and down Africa’s most populous nation and banks, gas stations and domestic airports were closed.
UNITED STATES
Theft ringleader sentenced
The leader of a crime ring that combined pickpocketing, identity theft and costumes to steal more than US$700,000 from banks is headed to prison for nine to 18 years. Arthur Franklin didn’t speak at his sentencing on Monday. The 47-year-old pleaded guilty in October last year to conspiracy, grand larceny and other charges. The Manhattan district attorney’s office said some conspirators stole victims’ wallets. Then associates working at a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, collection agency covertly tapped a credit database to get victims’ personal information. Prosecutors said other schemers then dressed up as the victims, posed as them at banks and withdrew thousands of US dollars.
UNITED STATES
Slave-math under fire
Suburban Atlanta school officials are deciding whether to discipline teachers who gave third-grade students math homework with word problems about slavery. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has called for the firing of the nine teachers involved. One of the math problems reads: “Each tree has 56 oranges. If eight slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?” Another was: “If Frederick got two beatings each day, how many beatings did he get in one week?” Gwinnett County schools spokeswoman Sloan Roach said on Monday that the district is working with the school principal to address the problem after parents complained about the worksheets.
UNITED STATES
Base lockdown after theft
Army authorities ordered about 100 troops on lockdown after night-vision goggles and other high-tech gear worth US$600,000 was stolen from a base in Washington state, officers said on Monday. The lockdown restricts the soldiers to their barracks, showers and work place and bars them from venturing off of Joint Base Lewis-McChord until army criminal investigators complete their work, a spokesman said.
UNITED STATES
Ex-soldier charged
A former soldier was charged on Friday with attempting to provide material support to al-Shabaab in Somalia by trying to join its ranks. Federal prosecutors in Maryland said Craig Baxam was arrested on Friday. Prosecutors said Baxam, 24, left the US last month and was arrested by Kenyan authorities, who suspected he was traveling to Somalia to join al-Shabaab. He was interviewed by FBI agents in Kenya and arrested on his return to Maryland.
UNITED STATES
Execution drug defended
Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning produced documents on Monday he said contradicted claims that state officials had been conned into buying stolen doses of an execution drug. The Nebraska Department of Correctional Services announced in November last year it had obtained sodium thiopental, one of three drugs needed to carry out executions by lethal injection, from Swiss company Naari AG. Nebraska plans to use the drug to execute Michael Ryan for a 1985 slaying. However, Ryan’s attorney claims the doses Nebraska recently bought were supposed to be used only for “test and evaluation” as an anesthetic in Zambia and not sold. Bruning said the e-mails and financial statements released on Monday show the Indian drug broker, Harris Pharma LLP, bought the drug from Naari and then sold doses to Nebraska.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema