NEW ZEALAND
Students survive trail ordeal
Two 21-year-old US students have walked out of the country’s wilderness after a snowstorm trapped them for nine days. Police say they survived by rationing their meager supplies and warming themselves in hot springs. Alec Brown and Erica Klintworth are both students from University of Wisconsin Stevens Point who are studying abroad. They had planned to hike and camp for a few days at hot springs on the South Island, but authorities say heavy rains and a snowstorm prevented them from being able to cross a river and return. They met up with members of a search team on Sunday — hungry, but otherwise in good shape.
MALAYSIA
Custody death officer jailed
A court yesterday sentenced a constable to three years in jail over the death in custody of an ethnic Indian man in a case underscoring complaints of police brutality. A. Kugan, 22, died in 2009 at a police station where he had been detained on suspicion of stealing luxury cars, sparking uproar among minority ethnic Indians and activists who allege frequent police corruption and abuse. Constable V. Navindran, who is also an ethnic Indian, was sentenced by a court outside Kuala Lumpur to three years in jail for causing hurt to Kugan to extort a confession, his lawyer said. Another court had earlier acquitted Navindran, who is in his 30s, of causing grievous hurt, but a high court overturned that verdict and sent the case back to the lower court for Navindran to answer lesser charges. Nagarajan is to appeal against the verdict.
NEPAL
Japan climber scales peaks
A Japanese climber who was nearly killed by an avalanche in 2007 has become his country’s first person to scale the world’s 14 tallest mountains, completing his latest climb, mountaineering officials said yesterday. The Nepal Mountaineering Association said Hirotaka Takeuchi ascended the 8,167m-high Mount Dhaulagiri on May 26 to finish his 17-year mission. He was nearly swept to his death five years ago on Mount Ghashabrum. “I have always wanted to climb mountains as long as I remember,” Takeuchi said in an interview in Kathmandu. “It was always my childhood dream to scale high peaks.”
PAKISTAN
Glacier conflict zone thaws
Indian and Pakistani defence officials held a fresh round of talks yesterday seeking to end decades of dispute over the Siachen Glacier, dubbed the world’s highest battlefield. Army chief of staff General Ashfaq Kayani called for a negotiated end to the stalemate and said the glacier should be demilitarized after a deadly April avalanche which killed 140 people an army camp. Troops have faced off on the glacier since India captured it in 1984. Islamabad has since made unsuccessful attempts to wrest control of the hostile battleground, where sub-zero temperatures and high altitude have caused countless deaths. It is the 13th round of talks between the rivals on Siachen.
NEW ZEALAND
Lady Gaga poled on stage
Singer and performer Lady Gaga was struck on the head by a pole on Sunday while performing a concert in Auckland. Clips posted online show a backup performer accidentally striking Gaga with the set prop while removing it from the central stage. Gaga, holding a mock machine gun, staggers and rubs her head before briefly leaving the stage. She continued the show, part of a world tour.
UNITED KINGDOM
Many want poll on EU role
Half of Britons want an immediate say on the country’s relationship with the EU, while 81 percent believe a vote should be held “in the next few years,” according to a Populus poll published yesterday. Economic woes within the eurozone have recently brought Britain’s EU membership into focus, and 49 percent of respondents said an immediate referendum was needed. The poll, taken on behalf of the Times newspaper, found that a third of Britons wanted to be part of a single market in a wider European community, with 40 percent opposed.
ISRAEL
Nazi graffiti defaces museum
Hebrew graffiti thanking Adolf Hitler for the Holocaust and denouncing Zionism were sprayed inside the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, an Agence France-Presse correspondent said yesterday. Seven giant slogans, including one which read: “Thank you Hitler for your wonderful Holocaust that you arranged for us, it’s only because of you that we got a state at the UN” were sprayed in Warsaw Ghetto Square near the sculpture depicting the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. More graffiti was sprayed next to the cattle car memorial, which remembers how millions of Jews were transported from all over Europe to the Nazi death camps. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld confirmed basic details of the incident and said an investigation had been opened. He said it was not clear who was responsible.
FRANCE
Rare Napoleon letter sold
A rare letter in English written by Napoleon Bonaparte — and replete with errors — fetched 325,000 euros (US$406,400) at an auction on Sunday in Paris. The one-page letter, dated March 9, 1816, penned by Napoleon during his post-Waterloo exile on Saint Helena, was one of just three known in the world, auction house Osenat said. Addressed to the Count of Las Cases, Napoleon’s companion in exile, the letter was acquired by the private Museum of Letters and Manuscripts in Paris and originally estimated to fetch just 60,000 to 80,000 euros. In his Memorial of Saint Helena, Las Cases wrote about how Napoleon began in March 1816 to correspond with him in English to practice the language of his jailers that he had began learning a few weeks earlier.
UNITED STATES
Flame virus vanishes
Computer security researchers said on Sunday that the Flame computer virus that smoldered undetected for years in Middle Eastern energy facilities has gotten orders to vanish, leaving no trace. Anti-virus company Symantec said in a blog post that late last week, some Flame “command-and-control servers sent an updated command to several compromised computers,” adding that the “command was designed to completely remove [Flame] from the compromised computers.” Flame malware appears to have been “in the wild” for two years or longer and prime targets so far have been energy facilities in the Middle East, especially in Iran. The discovery of Flame immediately sparked speculation that it had been created by US and Israeli security services to steal information about Iran’s controversial nuclear drive. Computers infected with malware are typically programmed to reach out on the Internet to get updated orders from command servers controlled by hackers. In this case, it appeared that Flame masters gave an order for the malware to vanish, leaving behind no trail that investigators might be able to follow or clues to its origin.
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