AFGHANISTAN
Traffic accident kills 51
A bus and truck collided and burst into flames yesterday, killing at least 51 people. The collision occurred in Ghazni Province on a highway that links Kabul with Kandahar. At least 51 of the 56 passengers on the bus were killed, said General Zarawar Zahid, the provincial police chief. “It is very sad,” he said. “When you see the bodies, some of them are not recognizable.” Zahid said the cause of the crash has not yet been determined, but he ruled out the possibility of an attack.
JAPAN
Robot being built for exams
Researchers are working on a robot they hope will be smart enough to ace entrance exams at the nation’s top university, which test everything from maths to foreign languages. “It has to analyze the exam questions and convert formulations and equations to a form that it can process before solving it through computer algebra,” said Hidenao Iwane from Fujitsu Laboratories, the Japanese information-technology giant’s research unit. Fujitsu and Japan’s National Institute of Informatics said the target is to have their robot score high marks on the exam for Tokyo University by 2021. Before then, they’re hoping the robot can sail through national entrance exams.
SOUTH KOREA
Lee confidant sentenced
One of president Lee Myung-bak’s most trusted confidants was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail yesterday after being convicted on corruption charges. The Seoul Central District Court also ordered Choi See-joong, former head of the state-run Korea Communications Commission, to pay 600 million won (more than US$535,000) in fines. The 75-year-old was found guilty of accepting 600 million won in bribes from a construction company in return for influence peddling. In court, Choi admitted to receiving the money, but denied he had exerted any influence. He was acquitted on charges of receiving a separate 200 million won bribe.
NEW ZEALAND
Lucky ticket found in trash
A man threw away a winning lottery ticket worth NZ$27 million (US$22.5 million) after reading the wrong results and thinking it was useless. It was not until the following day, when he heard the prize had not been claimed, that he searched for the ticket and found he had won. The man, in his 20s, had bought the ticket on a whim, spending money he had set aside for a haircut after he went to his hairdresser and found the shop closed. “I originally checked the results on my phone, but I must have got the wrong draw so I thought my ticket was a loser. I chucked it aside and thought ‘that was that’ and went to work,” he told Fairfax News yesterday. “It was only when there was so much talk in the town about the unclaimed prize that I thought it might pay to recheck the ticket.”
CZECH REPUBLIC
Alcohol poisoning rises
Police said on Thursday they had found a cache of bootleg spirits as the death toll from methanol poisoning rose to 18 in what experts called the worst wave of alcohol poisonings in three decades. About 500 bottles of “suspect unstamped alcohol” were found in a garage in the city of Zlin, 300km southeast of Prague, local police spokesman Petr Jaros told reporters. Police found the cache after they detained a distributor on Wednesday who “had mixed bootleg spirits in the garage, probably without knowing it was so dangerous,” local police chief Bedrich Koutny told the DNES daily. The death toll from the week-old wave of methanol poisoning cases rose to 18, media reports said. More than 20 people were in hospitals, some of them now blind and some in artificial comas. Health Minister Leos Heger warned he expected further casualties. On Wednesday, the government banned spirits sales at stands and mobile shops and threatened to impose blanket prohibition if the situation worsens. The country has the world’s second-highest adult alcohol intake, according to WHO data.
? MEXICO
Teenage hitman investigated
Prosecutors on Thursday said they were investigating a 16-year-old suspected hitman who was believed to have participated in at least 50 murders while working for a drug gang. A spokesman for prosecutors in the northeastern state of Sinaloa said the teenager, identified as Francisco Miguel N., was part of a gang known as Los Mazatlecos, a criminal group attached to the Beltran Leyva drugs cartel. Police arrested the teen for carrying a loaded gun and drugs. He later confessed to working as a hitman for the group, local prosecutors said in a statement. The teenager said he had taken part in executions of police, farmers since February. The boy said he was given an AK-47 rifle and a pistol to carry out the various attacks in Sinaloa.
UNITED STATES
Hackers hit back at FBI
The hacker group known as Anonymous on Thursday publicized credit card numbers in retaliation for what it claimed was an FBI raid to arrest one of its members. The group said Barrett Brown was arrested in an FBI raid while participating in an online chat Wednesday. In retaliation, the group posted “these 13 credit cards details as teaser,” saying they were “potentially belonging” to government officials. A Twitter posting said an offshoot of the group called Antisec “retaliates on Barrett Brown arrestation.” According to a report on the Web site The Hacker News, Brown came to notoriety when he threatened to release the names of 75 collaborators of the Mexican Zetas cartel for kidnapping an Anonymous member. The report also said he founded Project PM, which collects information about the intelligence industry and what it claims are threats to privacy and democratic institutions
BOSNIA-herzegovina
Porn serves political purpose
A mayoral candidate in the country’s fourth-largest city, Zenica, is using one of the Internet’s greatest lures, pornography, for his campaign. Mirad Hadziahmetovic is an independent candidate with a relatively slim chance of winning next month’s election and so has uploaded pornographic clips to his official campaign Web site to help his bid. To view the material, visitors must answer questions, such as “What is more important for Zenica, job creation or increasing the municipal budget through taxes?” At the end of each clip there is a separately recorded video of Hadziahmetovic saying: “If you liked this clip, vote for me.”
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in 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
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was