AUSTRALIA
Bus boss hands out bonuses
A bus operator has stunned his employees by handing out A$15 million (US$16 million) in thank you bonuses, with workers saying yesterday they were overwhelmed by his generosity. Ken Grenda, 79, sold his family-run company after 66 years and decided to put a chunk of the profits into the pockets of his employees for their hard work and loyalty. Many of his 1,800 workers thought their banks had made an error when they discovered thousands of dollars in their accounts, the Herald Sun reported. They received an average A$8,500, although some got bonuses as high as A$100,000. Vernon Franklin, a driver at the company, said he was blown away by the gesture. “I was overwhelmed with the generosity of Mr Grenda,” he told Channel Nine. “I think we are losing a great man.”
CHINA
Wukan begins poll process
Villagers whose rebellion against local officials last year grabbed the headlines initiated a key process yesterday that will see them hold their first-ever open, democratic elections. Residents in Wukan, Guangdong Province, won rare concessions after they faced off with authorities for more than a week in December in a row over land and graft, including pledges to hold free village polls. China allows villagers across the country to vote for a committee to represent them, but Wukan residents said their leaders had never before allowed these polls to go ahead in an open fashion. However, yesterday they were due to openly select an independent election committee that would supervise their first democratic poll next month.
JAPAN
Defense official probed
The government said it is looking into whether a Defense Ministry official broke the law by urging his staff to vote in a mayoral election this month. Ro Manabe, director of the Okinawa Defense Bureau, last month called a meeting of employees about the election in Ginowan, the site of a US military base at the center of a dispute between local residents and the government, lawmaker Seiken Akamine said in parliament on Tuesday. Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura said yesterday an investigation so far has found no indication that Manabe broke any laws.
MALAYSIA
Three facing death penalty
Two Germans and a Moroccan are facing the death penalty on charges of smuggling more than 10kg of methamphetamine. A district court near Kuala Lumpur International Airport charged the three men on Jan. 13 with drug trafficking, a customs official who declined to be named said. Airport officials arrested the men arriving from Istanbul on Jan. 1.
ZIMBABWE
Baboons looting trucks
Troops of bag-snatching, truck-looting baboons are causing chaos at a border post between Zimbabwe and Zambia in daily raids for food, NewsDay reported on Tuesday. “Baboons are an issue that must be dealt with here because they destroy travelers’ goods,” Zimbabwe Revenue Authority station manager Tichaona Phiri said. “Sometimes they bite or clap people on their faces if they try to defend their property, and they can snatch ladies’ handbags and even destroy cars as they search for food.” They also tear up sacks of maize on trucks moving through the border. “These baboons can smell maize on trucks and considering their huge numbers, it is very difficult to control them, but the problem is that they behave like human beings and are very good tricksters,” he said.
UNITED STATES
Birth control pills recalled
Pfizer Inc said on Tuesday it was recalling about 1 million packets of birth control pills in the US because they may not contain enough contraceptive to prevent pregnancy. Pfizer said the birth control pills posed no health threat to women, but it urged consumers affected by the recall to “begin using a non-hormonal form of contraception immediately.” The drugmaker said the issue involved 14 lots of Lo/Ovral-28 tablets and 14 lots of Norgestrel and Ethinyl Estradiol tablets. It said an investigation had found that some blister packs of the oral contraceptive might contain an inexact count of inert or active ingredients in the tablets.
UNITED STATES
Muslims seek clemency
A US Muslim group has appealed to Iran’s top leader to show clemency for an ex-US military translator with dual citizenship condemned to death on accusations of being a CIA spy. A letter on Tuesday from the Council on American-Islamic Relations asks Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to spare the life of Amir Hekmati. The 28-year-old ex-Marine was born in Arizona and attended high school in Michigan. His Iran-born father is a professor at Mott Community College in Flint and says his son is not a spy. The council’s Michigan director Dawud Walid’s letter says his group hopes Hekmati receives “the same mercy and compassion” that Iran has shown other US citizens “charged with similar offenses.”
UNITED STATES
Protesters get staying orders
Eleven people who were arrested during the weekend’s turbulent Occupy Oakland protests have been ordered to stay away from the plaza outside Oakland City Hall that serves as the movement’s main staging area. Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley said two judges granted her office’s request for the stay-away orders during the demonstrators’ arraignments on Tuesday. The four protesters facing felony charges were directed to keep away from both Frank Ogawa Plaza and the Oakland Convention Center, while the seven charged with misdemeanors may not go within 100m of the plaza.
MEXICO
Child rescued from school
Municipal police say a seven-year-old was locked inside a classroom by his teacher as punishment for supposed misbehavior and left alone for six hours until he was rescued by officers at about midnight. The boy was found under the teacher’s desk, covering himself with one of her sweaters for warmth. Police say the boy’s family started looking for him on Monday after he didn’t return home from school on time. One of the boy’s friends said he had been punished by the teacher, so police were eventually called to the school and found the boy. Education officials say the mother has filed a criminal complaint and the case is under investigation.
UNITED STATES
Volcano forms lava dome
The warning level for a remote Alaskan volcano has been raised after a new lava dome began forming. The dome indicates the mountain could explode and send up an ash cloud that could threaten aircraft. The Alaska Volcano Observatory on Tuesday elevated the alert status for Cleveland Volcano. The observatory says the dome was about 40m in diameter on Monday. Cleveland is a 1,730m peak on an uninhabited island 1,513km southwest of Anchorage.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not