UNITED KINGDOM
Prince Harry wins approval
More than two-thirds of adults thought Prince Harry cavorting naked with women at a Las Vegas party was acceptable behavior, according to a poll out yesterday. The YouGov survey in the Sunday Times newspaper found that 68 percent thought the third-in-line to the throne’s antics were acceptable for a young, single man having fun on a private holiday, with 22 percent saying it was not. About 75 percent still had a positive view of the 27-year-old army helicopter pilot. While the two images of Harry are widely available on the Internet and abroad, only The Sun newspaper has published them in Britain, saying it was striking a blow for press freedom. Some 61 percent thought media baron Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid was wrong to do so, with 25 percent saying the country’s biggest-selling newspaper had been right to print them.
UNITED KINGDOM
London parliament to shut
The country’s iconic Houses of Parliament in London could close for up to five years while essential repairs are carried out, the Sunday Times said. The broadsheet said several options were on the table while the plumbing and electrics are refurbished and the building is purged of asbestos, including leaving the Palace of Westminster for good. “Officials are undertaking an initial study into options for the long-term upkeep of the palace,” a spokesman for parliament’s lower House of Commons told the weekly. “It is anticipated that the results of the initial study will be considered by the House of Commons commission and the House of Lords committee by the end of the year.” The Sunday Times said the Commons and the upper House of Lords could be evacuated for the first time since World War II, when the palace was repeatedly hit in Nazi air raids. Options include leaving the palace, selling it and building a new parliament; a temporary replica chamber in the palace grounds, or, spreading the repair work out across decades of parliamentary breaks. The interiors of the riverside Perpendicular Gothic palace, completed in 1870, have not been refurbished since the 1940s.
ISRAEL
Gaza rockets hit factories
Three rockets fired by Gaza militants hit the south yesterday, damaging two factories in the border town of Sderot, but without causing any casualties, the army said. “Two rockets hit two factories in the industrial zone in Sderot, while a third exploded in a nearby field,” a spokeswoman said, referring to a town of 24,000 people which lies less than a kilometer from the border with the Gaza Strip.
SPAIN
Crowds view ‘Monkey’ Christ
It has been dubbed the “world’s worst restoration,” but a 102-year-old church painting of Christ that now resembles a pale monkey is drawing visitors by the hundreds to the sleepy Spanish town of Borja. The town garnered global press attention after residents decried the well-meaning restoration efforts of Cecilia Gimenez, described as being in her 80s, who made a horribly botched attempt to restore a flaking oil painting of Christ wearing the crown of thorns. The “restored” painting looks like a pale monkey’s face surrounded by fur, with misshapen eyes and nose and a crooked smudge for a mouth. Some media have called it the worst restoration in history. On Saturday, hundreds of curious visitors lined up outside the Iglesia del Santuario de Misericordia church, where the image is painted on a column.
Nepal
Man shoots son by mistake
A farmer mistook his son for a monkey trying to steal his crops and shot the 12-year-old dead, police said yesterday. Chitra Bahadur Pulami had been climbing a tree to chase away macaques that had become a nuisance to the family, but his father Gupta Bahadur, 55, spotted the boy and opened fire, wrongly believing him to be one of the animals. The three species of monkey native to the country, the rhesus and Assamese macaque and the common langur, are considered sacred and farmers normally try to scare them away from their crops without injuring the animals. “I realised my mistake only when my son fell down and got stuck in one of the tree’s branches,” the farmer was quoted as telling police by the Nepali nagariknews.com Web site after the incident, on Friday.
China
Gang suspects arrested
Three dozen Chinese suspected of criminal acts against compatriots in Angola arrived in Beijing on Saturday under police guard as Beijing targets crimes by its nationals overseas, state media reported. The 37 people are suspected of involvement in kidnapping, robbery, blackmail, human trafficking and forced prostitution, Xinhua news agency quoted the Ministry of Public Security as saying. Their alleged victims also returned home on the same flight, Xinhua said. Special police teams dispatched to Angola busted 12 criminal organizations and a total of 48 cases in cooperation with police in the West African country, Xinhua said. The operation marked the first time that Chinese police had carried out a large-scale operation of that nature in Africa, Xinhua said. It quoted Liu Ancheng, head of the ministry’s criminal division, as lauding cooperation between police in the two countries.
India
Five killed by gang
Five Muslims were murdered by an armed gang from the ethnic Bodo community in fresh violence, after more than a month of clashes, police said yesterday. “A group of seven Muslim villagers in two vehicles were returning home from a relief camp when they came under attack,” said Sanjit Krishna, police chief of the western Chirang district, in Assam state. Five were found dead near Choudhurypara village, about 220km from Assam’s main city of Guwahati, while police are trying to trace the other two. The party had apparently been trying to reach their village after a few days of calm in the area and had dared to venture out on Saturday from their guarded government relief camp.
GERMANY
Journalists make appeal
German journalists working in China on yesterday called on Chancellor Angela Merkel to urge Beijing to improve reporting conditions when she arrives for talks in the Chinese capital this week. Merkel will hold talks with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) during a two-day visit which begins on Thursday. The journalists have written a letter to the chancellor calling on her to discuss their “deteriorating situation.” They complained Chinese authorities had been “willfully obstructing” their work by threatening to not renew working visas, intimidating Chinese assistants and pressuring interviewees into not talking to them. “Long-term German correspondents who have been working in Beijing since the 1990s have been observing a deterioration of the situation, even in comparison to the conditions then,” said the letter, which was signed by 26 correspondents.
UNITED STATES
Police wounded bystanders
All nine people wounded in a New York shootout between a gunman who killed a former co-worker and officers who responded to the incident were hit by police fire, officials said on Saturday. The shootout erupted on Friday morning in front of the iconic Empire State Building in the heart of Manhattan after Jeffrey Johnson, a former employee at a women’s apparel business, killed a former colleague. Nine people were wounded in the melee, all by friendly fire, police chief Raymond Kelly told reporters. Three of the wounded were still hospitalized in stable condition on Saturday, a police spokeswoman said.
UNITED STATES
Woman births grandson
A 49-year-old woman has given birth to her grandson after her daughter was precluded from becoming pregnant because of a heart condition. The Portland Press Herald newspaper reports that Linda Sirois gave birth on Aug. 13 for her daughter, Angel. Twenty-five-year-old Angel Hebert says her baby is “eating like a champ and he doesn’t fuss too much.” Sirois said she had offered for years to become a gestational surrogate for Angel if a doctor said she should not become pregnant.
MEXICO
Drug gangs block highways
Armed gangs blocked highways throughout Guadalajara, the country’s second-biggest city, on Saturday and vehicles were set on fire amid a surge in drug-war violence. Police confirmed seven unauthorized roadblocks constructed with charred, smoldering cars and trucks within the Guadalajara city limits and 15 others in the surrounding Jalisco State. Luis Carlos Najera, police chief for Jalisco State, told reporters at a news conference late on Saturday that one man was seriously wounded by gunfire, but no arrests had been made. “We don’t know who is behind this operation,” Najera said. He added that all of the roadblocks have since been cleared.
UNITED STATES
Bear kills man in park
A hiker in Alaska’s Denali National Park photographed a grizzly bear for at least eight minutes before the bear mauled and killed him in the first fatal attack in the park’s history, officials said on Saturday. Investigators have recovered the camera and looked at the photographs, which show the bear grazing and not acting aggressively before the Friday attack, Denali Park Superintendent Paul Anderson said. A state trooper shot and killed the male bear on Saturday. The hiker was identified late on Saturday as Richard White, 49, of San Diego. He was backpacking alone along the Toklat River on Friday afternoon when he came within 50m of the bear, far closer than the 0.4km of separation required by park rules, officials said.
UNITED STATES
Nurse ruins kidney
A nurse accidentally disposed of a kidney from a living donor this month at an Ohio hospital, and doctors tried unsuccessfully for at least two hours to revive the organ in what medical experts describe as a rare accident, health officials said. “Human error rendered the kidney unusable,” University of Toledo Medical Center spokesman Toby Klinger said on Saturday. One of the doctors involved told David Grossman, a Toledo-Lucas County health commissioner, that a nurse disposed of the kidney improperly. Grossman told the Blade newspaper in Toledo that a man had donated the kidney to his older sister.
‘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