AUSTRALIA
Two passengers missing
An air and marine search was under way off the east coast for two passengers who were discovered missing yesterday morning after the cruise ship Carnival Spirit docked at Sydney Harbour’s Circular Quay, police Sergeant David Rose said. He did not give further details, but Australian Associated Press reports the search for the 30-year-old man and 26-year-old woman extends from Sydney 100m north to the city of Newcastle. Their nationalities have not been released. A spokeswoman for ship operator Carnival Corp was not immediately available for comment. The Miami-based company is the world’s largest cruise operator and has been plagued by high-profile problems in recent years.
SINGAPORE
Find a loo with new app
For those on the go, finding a clean toilet in the city-state and giving feedback on the best and worst commodes is now in hand with a new app for smartphones and tablets. The Restroom Association of Singapore says the LOO Connect service on its toilet.org.sg Web site allows people to pinpoint and comment on public facilities and to see those given three, four or five stars. The non-profit group said it was “leveraging on the ‘crowdsourcing’ trend and technology to recognize clean toilets and encourage socially responsible behavior.”
UNITED STATES
Clinton says Xi pragmatic
Former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday hailed Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) as “pragmatic,” saying he was more of a politician than his predecessor. “The new president appears to be a pragmatic leader,” she said in an adddresss to the think tank Pacific Council of International Policy, which focuses on issues with particular impact on the US West Coast, at a dinner event in Beverly Hills. “He’s also much more of a politician than his predecessor Hu Jintao (胡錦濤). I watched him walk a room, I watched him interact, not only with Chinese colleagues and American leaders, but unions from all over the world.” Clinton added that Xi “would do his country and the world a great work by gaining control and being sure that there is no daylight between the Communist Party leadership and the military leadership.”
MEXICO
Vatican abhors Death Saint
The folk Death Saint is a blasphemous symbol that should not be part of any religion, Vatican Culture Minister Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi said on Wednesday, adding that worshiping such an icon is a degeneration of religion. The Santa Muerte is a skeletal figure of a cloaked woman with a scythe in her bony hand. It is worshiped both by drug dealers in Mexico and by the terrified people who live in drug-torn neighborhoods. Ravasi was speaking at a dialogue among believers and nonbelievers in Mexico City as part of the Vatican’s “Courtyard of the Gentiles.”
ITALY
Berlusconi loses appeal
An appeals court on Wednesday upheld the tax fraud conviction and four-year prison sentence against former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi in a case that could see him barred from public office for five years. Berlusconi’s lawyers are expected to appeal the case to the nation’s highest Court of Cassation. In October, a lower court convicted Berlusconi in a scheme that involved inflating the price his Mediaset media empire paid for TV rights to US movies and pocketing the difference. Berlusconi has long denied the charges and says he is a victim of politically motivated prosecutors.
UNITED STATES
Nun, 83, damaged property
A federal jury has found an 83-year-old nun and two fellow protesters guilty of breaking into the primary storehouse for bomb-grade uranium. The jury found the three protesters guilty of a charge of interfering with national security and a second charge of damaging federal property. The trio spent about two hours inside the Y-12 National Security Complex in July, cutting through fences to reach the Tennessee facility. Once there, they painted slogans, chipped off a part of a wall with hammers and splattered human blood on the exterior.
UNITED STATES
Chopper crashes in street
A small helicopter lost power and came crashing down on a busy downtown Honolulu street on Wednesday afternoon, but no one was seriously injured, authorities said. The helicopter was on a photography flight when it lost power, forcing a crash landing on Fort Street, which is home to a large apartment complex and Hawaii Pacific University. The area is usually full of university students and downtown office workers, and has a lot of vehicle and pedestrian traffic. The chopper ended up along a curb, badly damaging a parked car. Preliminary information indicates the Robinson R22 Beta had an engine failure, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Allen Kenitzer said.
UNITED STATES
Bees ‘killed climber, dog’
An Arizona climber has been found dead, dangling from a rope on a cliff face south of Tucson, after apparently being stung to death by bees, police said on Wednesday. Steven Wallace Johnson, 55, a counselor with about 30 years experience hiking and climbing, headed into the mountains south of Tucson on Friday, Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada said. Johnson was reported missing on Monday by co-workers after he failed to show up for work. A Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office search and rescue team found his body that afternoon, Estrada said. “He had been stung repeatedly and he was dangling there,” he said. He said Johnson’s dog had also been attacked by bees and was found dead nearby.
UNITED STATES
‘Pastry Chef’ gets tasty price
An Impressionist oil painting depicting a chef in his white uniform fetched a tasty US$18 million on Wednesday, the most ever paid at auction for a work by the artist Chaim Soutine. Soutine’s Le Petit Patissier (The Little Pastry Chef), was the highlight of the Christie’s auction in New York. Christie’s said Soutine’s rosy-cheeked chef, the sixth of a renowned series painted in about 1927, set an auction record for the Russian-born French artist. Marc Chagall’s unusual Three Acrobats was the second-most expensive work at the sale in Manhattan, selling for US$13 million.
UNITED STATES
Omega-3 not good for heart
Fish oil supplements rich in omega-3 fatty acids are not beneficial for patients at high risk of cardiovascular troubles and already being medicated, a study found on Wednesday. In the study, carried out in 2010 in Italy with 12,513 patients, half the group took an omega-3 supplement and the other half an olive oil placebo. “In a large general-practice cohort of patients with multiple cardiovascular risk factors, daily treatment with n-3 fatty acids did not reduce cardiovascular mortality and morbidity,” the study said. The research was led by Mario Negri at the Societa Prodotti Antibiotici in Milan.
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