NEPAL
Jeep crash kills at least 14
At least 14 pilgrims were killed when a jeep carrying them to a sacred Hindu site in the south swerved off a highway and fell 100m into a stream below, police said yesterday. The jeep was taking the devotees to Ridi, a pilgrimage town in Palpa District, 120km west of Kathmandu, late on Friday when the driver lost control, police spokesman Rajendra Singh Bhandari said. “Locals came to know about the accident in the morning and informed the police. The death toll is likely to rise as the police rescue team is searching for bodies,” he said. Ridi, which lies at the confluence of the Ridi Khola and Kali Gandaki rivers, is visited by thousands of Hindus who bathe, worship at temples and cremate their dead. District police inspector Purshotam Pandey said the pilgrims were carrying the remains of a relative to place them in the waters when their jeep crashed.
INDIA
Minister proposes toilet fund
A top minister has proposed projects worth US$130 million to rid the country of the scourge of open defecation and clean up a rail system he described as the world’s “largest open toilet,” reports said on Friday. Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh told a meeting in New Delhi on Thursday that the nation, where 130 million households are without a latrine, accounted for 60 percent of the global volume of open defecation. “This is a matter of great shame, anguish, sorrow and actually anger,” Ramesh, who is also responsible for the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, was quoted as saying by the Times of India. The minister unveiled a proposal to spend 1.5 billion rupees (US$28 million) to provide 100,000 bio-toilets to villages across India in the next two years. He also proposed a 5 billion rupee project to replace the open-hole toilets on the 50,000 coaches that ply the vast railway network with bio-toilets over the next five years. Carrying 11 million passengers a day, Indian Railways “is really the largest open toilet in the world,” Ramesh said, adding that his ministry would be willing to pick up half the cost of the toilet refit.
MALAYSIA
Alleged drug duo face death
An Australian woman and a Nigerian man have been arrested after drugs were discovered in the car they were driving in the capital Kuala Lumpur, police said yesterday. Police arrested the duo after stopping their car and finding 1kg of methamphetamine on July 17, federal narcotics chief Noor Rashid Ibrahim said. The two were in custody and being investigated for drug trafficking. Noor Rashid did not immediately have further details. Drug trafficking carries a mandatory death sentence by hanging, where hundreds of people are on death row, mostly for drug offenses. Anyone found to be in possession of at least 50 grams of methamphetamine is considered a trafficker.
THAILAND
King helps ease traffic
The king wants to help ease Bangkok’s legendary traffic jams and other inconveniences — and that means a few changes to the treatment of royals on the roads. On Friday, authorities distributed 25,000 handbooks to police and other officials with guidelines for directing royal convoys and new protocol for royal appearances in public places. The manual overturns several practices that had quietly irritated the public in a country where open criticism of the royal family is taboo. Among the new rules: shopping malls do not have to shut if a royal family member shows up, and oncoming traffic will be permitted on the road opposite a royal convoy.
POLAND
Lightning kills hikers
Four hikers were killed, probably by a lightning strike, on a tourist track in the Pieniny mountain range, police told local media. The four, a married couple in their 50s, their daughter and her boyfriend, were reported missing on Wednesday evening when they did not return from a walk in the mountains on the border with Slovakia. The hikers, all from Warsaw, were found dead early on Friday. “We saw violent bolts of lightning around the place where they were located, which is why this option [a lightning strike] is the main one currently being considered,” police officer Jacek Bobek told broadcaster TVP Info.
CZECH REPUBLIC
Gorilla hangs himself
A gorilla has died in the Prague Zoo after accidentally hanging himself with a climbing rope, zoo officials said on Friday. The zoo said in a statement that five-year-old Tatu was found hanging with a rope around his neck on Friday morning in a sleeping room. Zoo spokesman Michal Stastny said all attempts to revive Tatu failed. He said there were no cameras in the room and it is not clear exactly what happened. Mammals curator Pavel Brandl said Tatu likely unbraided one of the dozens of ropes the gorillas use in their pavilion for climbing and put a strand around his neck before hanging himself. “It was an accident,” Brandl said. He said the ropes are checked daily. Brandl said another gorilla, Kamba, appeared to be trying to help Tatu when zookeepers arrived, but “it’s hard to say what exactly she was doing.” The zoo still has six gorillas and they are among the most popular animals there. Tens of thousands of people watched Tatu’s birth online on May 30, 2007.
UNITED KINGDOM
Twitter ‘bomber’ acquitted
A British man has won a challenge against his conviction for tweeting that he would blow up an airport if his flight was canceled. Paul Chambers became an Internet free-speech cause celebre when he was convicted and fined in 2010 for using Twitter to say he would blow Robin Hood Airport in the north “sky high” if his flight, due to leave a week later, was delayed. He insisted he was joking, but a court convicted him of sending menacing or offensive messages. High Court judges on Friday overturned the conviction, saying there was no evidence to suggest that anyone who saw the tweet found it to be menacing or alarming. Chambers expressed his relief after the verdict, saying it was ridiculous the case ever got so far.
RWANDA
Countries suspend aid
The country is coming under increasing pressure to halt alleged support for the DR Congo’s latest rebellion, with the Netherlands suspending some aid and Britain delaying a payment for budgetary support. Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo expressed regret on Friday at “hasty decisions based on flimsy evidence” by unspecified donors suspending or deferring aid. The US last week cut US$200,000 in planned military aid. On Friday, the Netherlands said it was suspending 5 million euros (US$6.1 million) promised to improve the judicial sector. Britain, the country’s biggest donor, said it was delaying a budget support payment scheduled this month. London’s Financial Times newspaper quoted a Swedish aid official on Thursday saying Scandinavian countries on the board of the African Development Bank also forced the delay of a decision on the disbursal of US$38.9 million in budget aid from last week until September.
UNITED STATES
Man arrested over threats
US police arrested a man and seized an arsenal of weapons after he threatened his employer and raised fears he was inspired by the recent mass shooting in Colorado, officials said on Friday. Police in Prince George’s County, Maryland, told a news conference that the man, who was about to be fired, told his employer on several occasions: “I am the Joker, I’m gonna load my guns and blow everybody up.” The threat was a chilling reminder of last week’s rampage at a midnight screening of the latest Batman movie in Aurora, Colorado, which left 12 people dead and 58 injured. Alerted to the threat on Thursday, police searched the man’s home where they found about 25 firearms, including semi-automatic rifles and pistols, and several thousand rounds of ammunition, a federal agent said. The suspect, who was wearing a T-shirt that read “Guns don’t kill people, I do,” was arrested without incident and was taken in for medical treatment, a police official said. The suspect has not yet been charged as the investigation continues.
MEXICO
Zetas leader arrested
The navy says it has captured a regional leader of the Zetas drug cartel. Navy personnel said on Friday that suspect Mauricio Guizar Cardenas had 20 hand grenades, a light anti-tank rocket and a submachine gun in his possession. The navy said that Cardenas had been detained on Thursday at a hotel in the central state of Puebla. It said he served as a regional operations chief for the Zetas in the Gulf coast states of Veracruz, Tabasco and Campeche, as well as the southeastern states of Chiapas and Quintana Roo. Cardenas is nicknamed “The Yellow One,” apparently because of his sallow complexion. He allegedly worked directly for Zetas co-leader Omar Trevino Morales.
UNITED STATES
Jackson custody deal inked
Michael Jackson’s mother will share custody of his children with his nephew, lawyers said on Friday after a hectic week for the musical family. Katherine Jackson, 82, met with her grandson T.J. Jackson, 34, on Thursday and agreed that joint custody is in the best interest of the children, the Jackson family matriarch’s lawyer Perry Sanders said in a statement. “Mrs Jackson is extremely pleased with the prospect of enjoying the pleasure of raising Michael’s children without the day-to-day tedium of items such as managing the large staff that goes with such a high-profile family and focus her attention on being a grandmother and raising Michael’s children,” Sanders said. The Jackson family will formalize the new custody arrangement early next week, Sanders said, ending the family’s dispute over the custody of 15-year-old Prince, Paris, 14, and Blanket, 10.
MEXICO
Movie theater evacuated
A movie theater in the west of the country evacuated a showing of the Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises after a small fire broke out in a garbage container just outside the theater early on Friday. A spokesman for the civil defense department in the city of Zapopan said about 800 movie theater patrons and employees were evacuated as a precautionary measure because the fire produced a lot of smoke. Department spokesman Julio Quinones said no injuries were reported in the fire. There were no immediate indications the blaze was intentionally set.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of