AUSTRALIA
Ambulance drugs stolen
Hundreds of people were given water instead of pain-killing medication after thieves siphoned off the drugs from ambulance supplies and refilled the empty vials from the tap, officials said yesterday. Authorities in the state of Victoria said large amounts of the drug fentanyl had been taken and an investigation was under way. Ambulance Victoria chief executive Greg Sassella said hundreds of patients were affected by the switch. “We have been able to identify all those patients that may have come into contact with this issue and we have been in direct contact with them and we can assure them they are safe,” he said. “We apologize for any sub-optimal pain relief they had.” Fentanyl is often used by paramedics as a fast-acting painkiller and usually administered as a nasal spray. It can be addictive and is used by some drug abusers as a substitute for heroin.
SOUTH KOREA
Travel bans sought
A special prosecutor has asked for President Lee Myung-bak’s son to be banned from leaving the country while he probes alleged irregularities in a project to build Lee’s retirement home. The office of special counsel Lee Kwang-bum asked the justice ministry to bar Lee Si-hyung, 34, from going abroad, a ministry official said yesterday. “We’ve received a request for an immediate ban on leaving the country and we’re now processing it,” the official said. According to Yonhap news agency, the prosecutor has asked for similar travel bans on 10 others, including former presidential security service chief Kim In-jong. The move comes a day after a 63-member team kicked off an investigation into a now-defunct project to build a retirement home for Lee. The controversy centers around the joint purchase last year by Lee Si-hyung and the presidential security service of a plot of land in Seoul.
INDIA
Minister’s defense criticized
Steel Minister Beni Prasad Verma has dismissed claims that a colleague embezzled US$134,000, saying the sum was too small to be taken seriously. Verma spoke out in defense of Salman Khurshid, the law minister who has been accused of siphoning off government money allotted to a trust that he heads to help disabled people. “I believe Salman Khurshid could not have embezzled 71 lakh [7.1 million rupees or US$134,500]. It is a very small amount for a central minister,” Verma was quoted as saying by the Times of India yesterday. “I would have taken it seriously if the amount was 71 crore [710 million rupees],” he added. The newspaper ran an editorial criticizing Verma’s statement as “grossly ill-timed and ill-phrased,” adding the the “comments reflect the rather blase attitude that the political class has developed towards corruption.”
JAPAN
Elephant kills keeper
An elephant trampled its Laotian keeper to death at Fuji Safari Park yesterday as he tried to stop the animal from attacking its newborn calf, police and reports said. Inthavong Khamphone, 30, had watched the elephants overnight with other keepers at the zoo after the mother gave birth on Sunday, police said. “Khamphone entered the cage with another keeper because the mother started attacking the baby,” a police officer said. “The mother then started attacking Khamphone.” He had come to Japan with the mother elephant in July last year, Jiji Press and the Sankei Shimbun said, citing the zoo. Reports said the keeper had died after the two-tonne elephant stood on his chest.
UNITED STATES
First lady casts vote
First lady Michelle Obama cast an absentee ballot on Monday, twinning a campaign push for early voting with an affectionate morale boost for her husband, who was hunkered down at debate camp. “Hey, @BarackObama, I just dropped my absentee ballot in the mail — I couldn’t wait for Election Day! Love you! — mo,” the first lady wrote on Twitter. The president, locked away in a Virginia resort ahead of his debate with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney yesterday, quickly tweeted back, in an apparently orchestrated move, saying he would go home to vote later this month. “I’m following @MichelleObama’s example and voting early, on Oct. 25. If your state has early voting, join me — bo,” Obama tweeted.
ISRAEL
Early elections called
The parliament voted yesterday to dissolve itself and hold early elections on Jan. 22 next year, a move championed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose coalition is leading in the opinion polls. The dissolution of the Knesset was approved by 100 votes to none in a third reading after a lengthy session in the 120-seat chamber. Last week, Netanyahu announced he wanted to bring forward the election — originally scheduled for October next year — because of the current deadlock among coalition partners over the passage of a budget packed with austerity measures. Opinion polls suggest that Likud party leader Netanyahu and his coalition of right-wing and religious parties will win comfortably given the fragmented opposition, regional tensions and the world economic crisis.
UNITED STATES
Drug lord’s daughter seized
The daughter of one of the world’s most sought-after drug lords has been charged with trying to enter the country on someone else’s passport, officials said on Monday. Alejandrina Gisselle Guzman Salazar, 31, was arrested on Friday at San Diego’s San Ysidro port of entry and charged with fraud and misuse of visas and other documents. Two officials said on Monday she told authorities her father was Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the arrest publicly.
AUSTRIA
Big crime worth billions: UN
International organized crime is worth US$870 billion, the head of the UN’s office on drugs and crime (UNODC) said on Monday, urging greater coordination in fighting it. “We are able to quantify the cost of transnational organized crime, it is US$870 billion,” UNODC executive director Yury Fedotov told a crime conference in Vienna. “But we cannot calculate the misery and suffering caused to millions of people by these illicit activities,” he added.
UNITED STATES
Hulk Hogan sues DJ
Former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan sued a disc jockey, the DJ’s ex-wife and a gossip Web site on Monday, after a sex tape involving Hogan and the woman was posted online. Hogan said in two lawsuits that he had consensual sex with his best friend’s wife, Heather Clem, about six years ago in the Clemses’ home, but he did not know he was being secretly recorded. “Mr Hogan had a reasonable expectation of his privacy, just as all Americans have a reasonable expectation of their privacy in their bedrooms,” attorney Charles Harder said. The video was posted on the online gossip site Gawker. Hogan is seeking US$100 million in damages.
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
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