INDONESIA
Drug sentence reduced
Schapelle Corby’s lawyer says the Australian could be released from prison in Indonesia next month after her sentence was reduced. Corby was convicted in 2005 of smuggling marijuana into Bali and sentenced to 20 years’ in prison, including time spent awaiting trial. In May, Indonesia’s president reduced her sentence by five years. Friday’s six-month reduction means she has now served two thirds of her sentence and is eligible for parole. Lawyer Iskandar Nawing says they are arranging necessary guarantees from the Australian Consulate and Corby’s family to apply for parole next month. He says he expects Corby to be released in late September. The 34-year-old Corby was among 58,595 prisoners across Indonesia whose jail terms have been reduced to mark Independence Day. More than 2,200 were freed.
PAKISTAN
Car bomber kills 5 troops
A suicide car bomber has killed five security troops at a road checkpoint in the country’s volatile southwest, Pakistani spokesman Murtaza Baig said yesterday. The attacker detonated his explosives yesterday after he was stopped at the checkpoint in a Quetta suburb, he said. The killed troops were members of Pakistan’s paramilitary Frontier Corps. Baluchistan province and its capital, Quetta, have been the scene of an insurgency by Baluch nationalists who are demanding greater rights and share from the income generated from gas and minerals extracted from the province. Various Baluch groups are blamed for attacks on the province’s security forces and are suspected of targeting other ethnic groups in the region. Islamist Taliban militants and the extremist group Lashker-e-Jhangvi are also active in the province.
VIETNAM
Typhoon kills four
At least four people died as Typhoon Kai-Tak barrelled across northern Vietnam bringing high winds and floods to several areas including the capital, Hanoi, reports said yesterday.
The typhoon, which made landfall late on Friday, was downgraded to a tropical depression yesterday but continued to dump water on already flooded parts of the country. More than 11,000 boats, including several hundred used by tourists at the UNESCO world heritage site Halong Bay, were ordered to stay close to the shore. The Vietnamese army put 20,000 soldiers backed by helicopters, rescue boats and canoes on standby to handle any incidents. Kai-Tak swept across Philippines’ main island of Luzon, dumping heavy rain on the Cagayan basin and other areas in the north, killing four people.
PAKISTAN
US drone kills five
A US drone attack yesterday killed at least five militants in a remote Pakistani tribal town near the Afghanistan border, security officials said. The drone fired two missiles on a compound in Shuwedar village in the troubled North Waziristan region considered a stronghold of Taliban and Al-Qaeda linked militants. Local intelligence officials confirmed the attack and casualties. The attack came as people in the deeply religious region celebrated the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr, they said. Attacks by unmanned US aircraft are deeply unpopular in Pakistan, which says they violate its sovereignty and fan anti-US sentiment, but US officials are said to believe the attacks are too important to give up.
UNITED STATES
Teacher guilty in sex case
A former Texas high school teacher was convicted on Friday after having sex with five 18-year-old students at her home. It took the jury less than an hour to conclude that Brittni Nicole Colleps, 28, of Arlington, was guilty of 16 counts of having an inappropriate relationship between a student and teacher. The second-degree felony is punishable by two to 20 years in prison per count. The former Kennedale High School English teacher had sex with the students at her home over two months last year, authorities said.
UNITED STATES
Pit bull, owner attack bride
A bride is recovering from injuries after she was attacked by a pit bull and its owner at her wedding reception. Brittany Cortez says the alleged attacker, Joel Nevarez, is a troubled childhood friend who was invited to her reception at a Denver home. She said that he let the dog drag her around “like a rag doll” and punched her in the face and head with brass knuckles at the party early on Sunday last week. Cortez thinks the attack was motivated by jealousy. Nevarez is wanted for suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon. Police think he may have fled to Mexico, where his mother lives.
CANADA
Police find severed hands
Police on Friday discovered a pair of severed hands, after earlier this week finding a head and foot from what is believed to be a woman’s dismembered body in a Toronto area river. “We believe they all belong to the same person,” a police spokesman said, adding the remains were several weeks old. Hikers stumbled upon the foot floating in the Credit River west of Toronto on Wednesday. “Without a cause of death, we can’t call it homicide, but certainly foul play — there’s definitely something amiss,” acting inspector Randy Cowan of Peel Regional Police said. The case brings to mind the “Canadian Psycho,” a male ex-porn star suspected of killing a Chinese student with an ice pick in Montreal in May. However, police have dismissed any link to that case.
UNITED STATES
Clown had Jobs’ stolen iPad
Families waiting for San Francisco’s cable cars on a recent morning could not help but notice Kenny the Clown, who wore a curly rainbow wig as he twisted brightly colored balloons into animal shapes for visitors, blasting Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal from an iPad at his feet. Little did the clown know that the tablet doubling as his stereo would turn out to have been stolen from the home of the late Steve Jobs. “The thing that is embarrassing to me is I’m a huge fan of Steve Jobs,” said Kenneth Kahn, 47, a professional entertainer who police say unwittingly received a silver 64GB iPad pilfered from the home of the Apple co-founder last month. Kahn’s friend Kariem McFarlin, 35, of Alameda was arrested on suspicion of breaking into Jobs’ Palo Alto residence on Aug. 2.
UNITED STATES
Pot rally held in Seattle
Tens of thousands of people descended on a waterfront park in Seattle on Friday for the opening of what is billed as the nation’s largest marijuana rally — an event that has a pressing political edge this year as Washington state’s voters consider whether to legalize the fun use of pot for adults. Colorado, Oregon and Washington already have medical marijuana laws and all three also have legalization measures on the November ballot. Washington’s would allow sales of up to 28g of dried marijuana at state-licensed stores.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At 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
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese