LIBYA
Booze kills more than 50
More than 50 people have died in Libya since Saturday after drinking cheap homemade alcohol and hundreds have been poisoned, the health ministry said on Monday, as authorities in the Muslim country vowed a crackdown on booze trafficking. The ministry said 38 people died in Tripoli hospitals, while 13 others perished on their way to neighboring Tunisia, where their families were hoping they could be treated. At least 378 people were poisoned after drinking the homemade brew, known locally as Boukha, that was tainted with methanol, the ministry added, while urging Libyans to stop consuming any form of alcohol. A security official, asking to remain anonymous, said the authorities were preparing to crack down on suppliers and traffickers of alcohol, whose sale and consumption is prohibited, although it can be found on the black market.
FIJI
Wardens sacked over video
The authorities have sacked three prison wardens over an online video that appears to show officials beating and torturing two men, the prisons department said yesterday. The graphic video, posted on YouTube last week, attracted condemnation from the UN Commission on Human Rights and Amnesty International. Apparently shot using a mobile phone, it shows one handcuffed man being savagely beaten with batons and metal bars, and another being set upon by a dog as the animal’s handler urges it on. “I can confirm that three prison officers have been sacked in relation to the video that was posted on the Internet last week,” Prisons and Corrections Service spokeswoman Ana Tudrau Tamani said.
AUSTRALIA
Giant snail seized, destroyed
A baseball-sized snail with an insatiable appetite for hundreds of plants, including cocoa and papaya, has been seized and destroyed by officials, who said it posed a huge threat to local agriculture. The animal was found creeping across a Brisbane shipping container yard and was identified as a giant African snail, an East African pest capable of growing up to 30cm long and 1kg in weight. It is known to eat 500 different species of crops, fruits, plants and even other giant African snails, according to an Australian government Web site. The snail can lay 1,200 eggs a year, tolerates extreme temperatures and has few natural enemies in Australia. It also carries parasites that can infect humans with meningitis, which can in some cases be fatal. The last major outbreak of the snail was in 1977, when 300 were exterminated in Queensland in an eight-month campaign.
ISRAEL
Spreadsheet sparks furor
Students at a high school were in an uproar on Monday after a teacher mistakenly sent them an e-mail that spelled out what faculty members really thought about them. “Not too bright,” “Liar,” “Tactless,” “Big Baby,” “Anti-social,” “Has a thing for boys” and “Sick-o” were some of the descriptions on an Excel spreadsheet that landed in students’ inboxes. Protesting outside the Yitzhak Rabin High School in Kfar Saba, students pinned some of the descriptions on their shirts and demanded an apology, which the school’s principal made. “We will draw conclusions about our behavior and the way we express ourselves,” the principal, Ruth Lazar, was quoted as saying by the YNet news site. The list was compiled by teachers as a guide to potential misbehavior by the teens due to take part in a school visit to Holocaust sites in Poland. One of the teachers inadvertently copied the list to students who signed up for the trip, the school said.
ITALY
Marines to dodge charges
Two Italian marines charged in India with killing two fishermen while on anti-piracy duty will not return there from a home visit granted to allow them to vote in last month’s election, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Monday. The ministry said India had not responded to requests to seek a diplomatic solution to the case and there was now a formal dispute between the two countries over the terms of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. “Italy has informed the Indian government that, given the formal initiation of an international dispute between the two states, the marines Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone will not return to India at the end of their home leave,” the ministry said in a statement.
NETHERLANDS
ICC case collapses
The International Criminal Court (ICC) case against a man accused alongside Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta collapsed on Monday, prosecutors said, raising the chances that charges against Kenyatta will also fail to stick. Last week’s election of Kenyatta, accused by the ICC of crimes against humanity, has complicated Kenya’s ties its Western allies which see it as a major bulwark against the rise of Islamist militancy in east Africa. The ICC charged Kenyatta alongside former civil servant Francis Muthaura of orchestrating the violence that followed the 2007 election in which 1,200 were killed and more than 100,000 were forced to flee their homes. However, ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said the decision of a key witness to recant their testimony forced her to drop charges against Muthaura. As the prosecution of Muthaura and Kenyatta is linked and based on a lot of the same evidence, the decision may well impact the case against the Kenyan president-elect.
POLAND
Orchestra employee charged
An employee of a philharmonic was charged with murder in the double homicide of a young female harpist and a security guard inside the orchestra’s building, prosecutors said on Monday. The two victims were found dead on Friday morning in the building of the Lower Silesia Philharmonic in Jelenia Gora. The 60-year-old guard was found on the ground floor near the entrance and the harpist, 27, was found on the first floor. A 29-year-old suspect, identified only as Michal M, has been questioned and charged with murder, prosecutors’ spokeswoman Violetta Niziolek said.
UNITED STATES
Boy admits prank calls
A 12-year-old boy admitted in court on Monday that he falsely reported to police last year that criminals with guns and explosives had invaded the home of actor Ashton Kutcher and shot people, the Los Angeles County District Attorney said. The boy, whose name was withheld because he is a minor, prompted police to dispatch emergency responders to the Two and a Half Men star’s Hollywood home in October last year. Such prank emergency calls are known as “swatting” because SWAT officers are often sent to such purported crime scenes. The child was charged with making a false bomb threat and computer intrusion because he placed the call from a computer. The boy has also been charged with a misdemeanor count of making a false emergency report when he allegedly placed a hoax call about gunshots being fired on the Los Angeles-area property of teen pop star Justin Bieber.
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
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