AUSTRALIA
Fake Tahitian prince jailed
A man who led a playboy lifestyle while claiming to be a Tahitian prince was jailed yesterday for 14 years for stealing A$16 million (US$16.6 million) from a health department. New Zealand-born Hohepa Morehu-Barlow, known as Joel Barlow, pleaded guilty to eight offenses, including aggravated fraud and forgery at the Brisbane District Court. In sentencing, Judge Kerry O’Brien said Morehu-Barlow, 37, ran an audacious scheme in which he diverted funds from a grants scheme he ran to pay for his extravagant lifestyle. “The funds diverted by [Morehu-Barlow] were public monies earmarked ... to support charities and other community groups,” prosecutor Todd Fuller told the court, the Brisbane Courier-Mail reported. The court heard that Morehu-Barlow regularly signed bank documents “HRH,” for His Royal Highness. When he was arrested in 2011, police found a trove of luxury goods including a fake crown, a life-size horse lamp and a Louis Vuitton surf board. The scheme unraveled in 2011 when he faked a A$11 million invoice that made a fellow public servant suspicious. The colleague did an Internet search and found that the money went to a firm controlled by Morehu-Barlow.
IRAQ
Dozens die in bomb blasts
Car bombs and a suicide blast hit Shiite districts of Baghdad and south of the capital yesterday, killing at least 56 people on the 10th anniversary of the invasion that ousted former president Saddam Hussein. Sunni Islamist insurgents tied to al-Qaeda have stepped up attacks on Shiite targets since the start of the year to stoke sectarian tension and undermine Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The car bombs exploded near a Baghdad market and in other places across the capital. A suicide bomber driving a truck attacked a police base in a Shiite town just south of the capital, police and hospital sources said. Another 160 people were wounded in the attacks, hospital officials said. No group claimed responsibility for the blasts.
SOUTH KOREA
Stylish N Koreans go dotty
Polka-dot dresses and manual threshing machines were among the hottest consumer products in North Korea last year, an annual list compiled by a local researcher showed. The arrival of the patterned dresses in the top 10 list was down to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s wife, Ri Sol-ju, who was seen wearing them at public functions. “Young North Korean women are keenly interested in the first lady’s fashion style and try to follow her example,” Dong Yong-seung, a senior research fellow at the Samsung Economic Research Institute in Seoul, told reporters yesterday. Dong has been compiling a top 10 chart of consumer items in North Korea since 2010, basing her findings on interviews with North Korean defectors and Chinese traders on the Sino-North Korean border.
PAKISTAN
Daniel Pearl suspect held
The government arrested a former militant leader in connection with the 2002 murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, officials said on Monday. Qari Abdul Hai, once a leader of Sunni militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, was arrested on Sunday in Karachi, the officials said. Pearl was kidnapped in Karachi while researching a story on Islamist militants in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the US. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al-Qaeda militant who claimed responsibility for the attacks, said he beheaded Pearl after his abduction. It is not clear what role Hai is suspected of playing in the murder.
BRAZIL
Landslides kill 13
Landslides triggered by heavy rains have killed 13 people over the past 24 hours in the tourist town of Petropolis, an official said on Monday. “We are in a state of maximum alert,” Rio State Governor Sergio Cabral told media in Petropolis, a former imperial capital 68km north of Rio de Janeiro, as he updated the death toll from 10. He urged residents to leave high risk areas and to seek refuge in shelters. Up to 390mm of rain have fallen in some city districts in the past 24 hours, when only 270mm were anticipated for all of this month.
UNITED STATES
Police stop car during birth
A man who was pulled over for speeding as he rushed his pregnant wife to the hospital said he was determined to keep going despite the police lights flashing behind him. Tyler Rathjen planned to keep going as his wife, Ashley, began giving birth to their son in the passenger seat. However, a red light with heavy traffic finally forced him to stop. The baby’s head and arms were already out by the time Iowa City Officer Kevin Wolfe reached the passenger door. Ashley Rathjen gave birth to her third son, Owen, just blocks from Mercy Iowa City hospital on March 10. Wolfe helped with the final steps of delivery and then escorted the Williamsburg family to the hospital. His dashboard camera captured the episode.
FRANCE
Pubic shaving spreads virus
A trend for shaving, clipping or waxing pubic hair may encourage the spread of a skin virus, French doctors suggested on Monday. In a letter to the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections, dermatologists in Nice said that over the past decade they had noted a rise in cases of a poxvirus called Molluscum contagiosum, or MCV. MCV causes painless, pearl-like nodules on the skin that usually disappear after a few months. It is sometimes seen on the face, arms and hands, but can spread through scratching or sexual contact. The doctors reported on 30 patients, who over 14 months were treated at a clinic in Nice for sexually transmitted MCV. Six of them were women and the rest were men. All but three of the patients had removed pubic hair, with 70 percent shaving. All had MCV nodules on the pubis, abdomen or legs. Hair removal may cause “microtraumisms” to the surface of the skin, facilitating infection by the virus and other “minor” sexually transmitted infections, the doctors theorize. The risk appears to be higher for shaving, but does not apply to laser treatment for hair removal.
UNITED STATES
Japanese diplomat jailed
A Japanese diplomat based in California and charged with abusing his wife has been sentenced to a year in jail and will start serving it in May, a newspaper reported. Yoshiaki Nagaya, vice-consul at Japan’s consulate in San Francisco, will spend a minimum of six months at a jail in nearby San Mateo, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Monday, quoting deputy district attorney Tricia Povah. Nagaya had reached a plea deal in the case in December last year. That reduced his maximum possible sentence from 20 years to just one year. Nagaya, who is 33, had been charged with 17 felony offenses, 14 of domestic violence and three of assault, including stabbing his wife with a screwdriver and knocking out one of her teeth. US authorities said he did not have diplomatic immunity for crimes unrelated to his work. The wife, Yuka Nagaya, testified that her marriage was a turbulent one. She said she and her husband argued a lot over her suspicions that he was being unfaithful and visits from her in-laws.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in