AUSTRALIA
No funeral for PM’s father
The father of Prime Minister Julia Gillard donated his body to science and did not want to be buried or remembered at a funeral, but privately mourned, his death notice said yesterday. John Gillard, 83, died suddenly on Saturday morning in Adelaide, prompting the prime minister to rush home from an APEC summit in Russia to be with her family. A death notice in the Adelaide Advertiser newspaper described Gillard as a “humble man who always sought to help others” and wanted those wishing to honor his memory to donate to Medecins San Frontieres, his favorite charity. “He died as he lived, and has donated his body to science and requested that there should be no formal funeral service,” the notice read. John Gillard and his wife, Moira, moved to Australia from Wales in 1966.
JAPAN
Judoka denies raping teen
Retired double Olympic judo gold medalist Masato Uchishiba yesterday denied raping one of his teenage students in a hotel room, as his trial opened in Tokyo. Uchishiba, 34, who won the under-66kg title at the 2004 and 2008 Olympics, maintains he had consensual sex with the girl, who was drunk after a training camp party in the capital in September last year. Prosecutors say Uchishiba attacked the girl, a member of the college judo team he coached, in a hotel room after she fell asleep at a karaoke parlor, intoxicated. “When she became aware, she resisted by saying: ‘What are you doing? Stop.’ But he turned up the volume of the television and covered her mouth with his hand,” prosecutors said, according to NHK. Married man Uchishiba admits that sex took place, but denies it was forceful.
ESTONIA
Mock ad sparks uproar
A magazine insists it did not mean to cause offense following an uproar over a mock diet advertisement showing emaciated prisoners at a Nazi concentration camp. “It was published on our jokes page. I think people living in other cultural environments than ours just don’t understand it like we do,” said Sulev Vedler, deputy editor of Eesti Ekspress. He claimed the “Doctor Mengele weight-loss pill” ad was a swipe at national gas firm GasTerm Eesti, which last month posted a photo of the Auschwitz death camp’s notorious “Arbeit Macht Frei” gate on its Web site. GasTerm Eesti rapidly pulled the photo and apologized for what it claimed was a misplaced attempt to contrast lethal gas — which was used to kill Jews at Auschwitz — with the safe, home-heating variety. “For us it was an anti-fascist joke and a reaction to the recent, improper advertisement of one Estonian company. We didn’t mean to have fun at the expense of any nationality, there is no nationality mentioned in the picture,” Vedler said.
RUSSIA
Team eyes mammoth clone
Scientists have discovered well-preserved frozen woolly mammoth fragments deep in Siberia that may contain living cells, edging a tad closer to the Jurassic Park possibility of cloning a prehistoric animal, the mission’s organizer said on Tuesday. North-Eastern Federal University said an international team of researchers had discovered mammoth hair, soft tissues and bone marrow about 100m underground during an expedition in the northeastern province of Yakutia. Expedition chief Semyon Grigoryev said South Korean scientists with the team had set a goal of finding living cells in the hope of cloning a mammoth. “Only after thorough laboratory research will it be known whether these are living cells or not,” Grigoryev said.
CZECH REPUBLIC
Tainted alcohol kills eight
Eight people have died after drinking bootleg vodka and rum containing methanol, police and media said on Tuesday, in the worst case of fatal alcohol poisoning in the country in at least 30 years. About 20 people remain in hospital and police warned more cases could emerge. While such serious cases are rare, state and industry officials estimate that illegal alcohol sales are up and account for 10 to 20 percent of the market. The first victim was taken into hospital last Thursday in the Moravian-Silesian region in the northeast of the country. Police have detained a 36-year-old man suspected of being the source of the tainted alcohol. Prime Minister Petr Necas called the situation serious. The health ministry has stepped up checks on restaurants and bars after some of the suspect alcohol turned up in Prague.
GERMANY
Implants for transsexuals
Male-to-female transsexuals have a legal right to breast enlargement operations when hormone therapy fails to give them a feminine shape, the Federal Social Court in the central city of Kassel said on Tuesday. A transsexual may receive implants if her new breasts have not yet reached the size of a bra’s A-cup, the court said. “Transsexual insurance policyholders can make a claim to treatment measures to allow them to adapt their gender, including surgical procedures on healthy organs to minimize their psychological suffering, so as to approach the appearance of the other sex that is desired,” the court said. It said such a procedure was justified even if the patient had not yet had a sex-change operation. The court ruled in the case of a 62-year-old whose health insurance plan paid for hormone treatment and a sex change, but whose breasts failed to grow to female proportions.
UNITED STATES
Lake source of bad smell
A rotten egg smell which had Californians turning up their noses was caused by dead fish or algae in a nearby lake, and nothing more sinister, experts said on Tuesday. More than 200 people called authorities on Monday after the sulfurous odor was detected over a 240km area, leading to online speculation, including that it was some kind of geothermic event preceding a long-feared mega earthquake experts believe will shake California. However, experts at the South Coast Air Quality Management District said the source was almost certainly the Salton Sea, a huge lake a couple of hours east of San Diego. “We now have solid evidence that clearly points to the Salton Sea as the source of a very large and unusual odor event,” the air monitoring body’s executive officer Barry Wallerstein said. Hydrogen sulfide, “a product of organic decay such as that occurring in the Salton Sea, has an unmistakable rotten-egg odor,” the center said.
UNITED STATES
Boy, 8, safe after drive
Authorities said an eight-year-old boy escaped injury after taking his mother’s car for a spin through the neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, on Monday morning and hitting several objects before his joy ride ended on a neighbor’s lawn. Police in the town of Cheektowaga told reporters that the boy would not be charged with reckless driving. The boy’s mother said she woke up to find her son missing and called police. The boy was already in the car driving down the street. When he came to a nearby road with heavy traffic, he turned around and headed back home. On the way, he jumped a curb, ran over a street sign, a fire hydrant and a fence before the car came to a rest on a neighbor’s lawn.
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