INDIA
Death follows Facebook spat
A 17-year-old has committed suicide after a row with her parents who told her she had to stop using Facebook, police said yesterday. College student Aishwarya Dahiwal was found hanging in her bedroom on Wednesday after an argument with her parents in Maharashtra State’s Parbhani city, an investigating officer said, declining to be named. “On Wednesday night, she had an argument with her parents who told her not to just use Facebook and her mobile all day for chatting,” the officer said. “They told her to focus on her studies. After the argument, she locked herself in her room and was found hanging later, with a suicide note nearby,” he said.
AUSTRALIA
Dead mom cash shocker
An elderly woman lay dead for months in her home as her adult daughter, who apparently used air freshener to mask the smell, fraudulently accessed her bank accounts, police said yesterday. The body of the 83-year-old was found in the bedroom of her Sydney home a week ago, but a post-mortem suggested she had been dead for months. Her 48-year-old daughter, receptionist Melissa Peacock, who was believed to be her primary carer, was not at the premises. On Thursday she was discovered at a luxury hotel in Sydney and arrested, police said. “She was arrested and charged with failing to report a death and dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception,” they said in a statement. “Police will allege the woman had been fraudulently obtaining money from her deceased mother’s bank accounts on a number of occasions.” A court yesterday heard that Peacock told police her mother died on July 28 and that after finding the body she walked from the bedroom, shut the door and had not re-entered since, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. However, the court was told forensic evidence indicated attempts were made to keep the room clean after the woman’s death, including changing the sheets and using air freshener, the report said.
CHINA
Irate patient kills doctor
A man unhappy with the results of an operation on his nose stabbed a doctor to death and wounded two others yesterday, state media reported, in at least the third such attack in a week in which China promised to improve hospital security. The 33-year-old man, surnamed Lian, carried out the attack at a hospital in Wenling City in Zhejiang Province, Xinhua news agency reported. Lian had gone to the ear, nose and throat department looking for the doctor who treated him, but he was not there. He pulled out a knife and stabbed the head of the department instead, Xinhua said. Lian also stabbed two other doctors before he was restrained. Earlier in the week, a man killed himself by jumping from a hospital building after stabbing a doctor six times in Liaoning Province after a disagreement over complications from surgery on his arm. Two doctors were also beaten up by angry family members of a patient who died in hospital in Guangdong Province.
NORWAY
Man shot while on toilet
A Norwegian hunter took aim at a moose, but missed and accidentally hit a man sitting on the toilet in a nearby cabin on Thursday, police said. The bullet whizzed past the animal, pierced the wooden wall behind it and struck the man, in his seventies, in the stomach, police told public broadcaster NRK. The victim was flown to hospital, but his injury was not life threatening, said Anders Stroemsaether, the policeman who led the investigation. The hunter was taken in for questioning in Hvaler district, about 120km southeast of Oslo, police said. The moose escaped unscathed.
AUSTRIA
Shell prompts evacuation
Austrian state broadcaster ORF reported a tank shell was on offer as a dummy on a trading Web site. It says police had to clear a Vienna apartment house of its residents and put up road blocks after establishing that it was in fact a fully functional explosive. Thursday’s report said police were called to examine the shell by its new owner shortly after she had exchanged two bottles of wine and a picture frame for it. ORF said the shell’s previous owner had used it as a doorstop. The report says both women face unspecified criminal charges.
SOUTH AFRICA
Lion protest ban quashed
A South African court ruled on Thursday it was unconstitutional to ban an advertising campaign by an activist group urging South African President Jacob Zuma to stop the trade in lion bones. The adverts at Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport, the country’s main port of entry, featured a lioness looking down the barrel of a gun with the text “President Zuma can save her life.” Airport authorities pulled down the posters in August last year, just nine days into campaign group Avaaz’s month-long contract. The Johannesburg High Court ordered that the adverts be reinstated after Avaaz accused Airports Company South Africa of violating its right to freedom of expression.
UNITED STATES
Toxic tush ‘surgeon’ jailed
A transgender US woman who claimed to be a surgeon and reportedly injected adhesives and cement into a woman’s bottom was sentenced on Thursday to a year in jail. Oneal Ron Morris, 32, accepted a plea deal for one count of illegal practice of healthcare in what became known as the “toxic tush” case, in Miami Gardens, Florida. Another suit is pending against Morris, involving the death of a woman who was one of her patients. Prosecutors said on Thursday they could not determine exactly what substances Morris injected in women.
UKRAINE
Boxer to run for president
Heavyweight boxer and opposition politician Vitaly Klitschko said on Thursday he would run for president in 2015. Klitschko, 42, the reigning World Boxing Council (WBC) heavyweight champion, made his declaration to parliament after its deputies — predominantly from the ruling Party of Regions and its allies — amended a law on tax legislation in a way that could be used to prevent him from running for the presidency. He is the first declared contender against incumbent President Viktor Yanukovych, who is widely expected to seek a second term despite a slump in popularity because of Ukraine’s faltering economy. The 2m tall Klitschko said: “Everything that has taken place in parliament today with texts of laws, directly backed by ruling party deputies, does not intimidate me and will not stop me."
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing