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.
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