JAPAN
Rape suspect hunted
A massive manhunt was under way yesterday with 4,000 police officers, 850 vehicles, sniffer dogs, helicopters and boats scouring the city of Kawasaki for an escaped rape suspect, reports said. Yuta Sugimoto, 20, was meeting his lawyer on Tuesday at the prosecutors’ office over claims he was part of a gang that raped and robbed a woman on Thursday last week. He apparently loosened his waist rope after requesting a toilet break, a Kanagawa prefectural police official said on condition of anonymity due to departmental rules. The suspect tore himself away from police officers and escaped.
NORTH KOREA
Election date set
The presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly has decided the parliamentary election — held every five years — will take place on March 9, the official KCNA news agency said yesterday. The last parliamentary vote — a highly staged process with only one approved candidate standing for each of the 687 districts — was held in 2009. The announcement of the vote coincided with Kim’s birthday yesterday. His age is a matter of speculation due to confusion about the year of his birth. The rubber-stamp parliament is usually called into session twice a year for a day or two to pass government budgets and approve personnel changes.
INDIA
Train fire kills nine
A fire on an overnight train killed at least nine people yesterday with sleeping victims overcome by flames and smoke as the blaze ripped through three carriages, Western Railway spokesman Sharat Chandrayan said. The blaze broke out about 2:30am, shortly after the train left Mumbai for the northern city of Dehradun, he said. Many passengers managed to escape from the blazing and smoke-filled coaches by breaking open the back doors, a survivor, Mehul, told news channel CNN-IBN, but he said others died of suffocation.
SOUTH KOREA
Pop star mourns family
The leader of popular boy band Super Junior yesterday bid farewell to his father and grandparents, who died in a suspected murder-suicide on Monday. TV footage showed LeeTeuk, dressed in a black suit and tie, crying when other Super Junior members moved a coffin to a black limousine at a Seoul hospital before leaving for a crematorium. Media reports say LeeTeuk’s grandparents were found dead in bed while his father was hanging by a robe around his neck at their home. Media reports cited police officers as saying the father left a suicide note suggesting he committed suicide after strangling his parents.
CHINA
Samaritan kills himself
A man who aided a senior citizen only to be accused of knocking him down has committed suicide in the face of demands for compensation, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported yesterday. Wu Weiqing, 46, from Dongyuan, Guangdong Province, was riding his motorbike on New Year’s Eve when he came across an elderly man who appeared to have been knocked over, Wu’s widow told the newspaper. Wu helped the man up and drove him to a clinic, where he paid 3,500 yuan (US$580) in fees for him, she said. Daughter Wu Haiyan told the Guangzhou Daily that two days later her father told relatives that the old man’s family was demanding a huge sum for “medical fees … he thought it better to die to prove his innocence rather than drag his family down.” The elderly man’s family denied they had requested huge sums.
UNITED KINGDOM
Helicopter crash kills four
A US military helicopter crashed while executing a low-level training exercise on Tuesday, killing all four crew members, British military officials announced. “A US Air Force HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopter crashed at about 6:00pm today [Tuesday] near Salthouse on the Norfolk coast,” said a statement issued by the Royal Air Force’s (RAF) 48th Fighter Wing, which is based at the nearby RAF Station Lakenheath. Officials said that the aircraft, a highly modified version of the US Army’s Black Hawk helicopter, may have been carrying live ammunition.
CHILE
Upside-down bridge ridiculed
It was meant to be the nation’s first drawbridge, but the structure in Valdivia was built with at least one traffic deck upside down, delaying the bridge’s opening, officials said on Tuesday. The US$30 million project was supposed to open this month and become an instant landmark connecting Valdivia with Teja Island by bridging the Cau Cau River. Instead, it has ended up as a laughingstock on social media sites after inspectors found that one or two of the traffic decks were installed backward, authorities said. “The only responsible party is the builder. We are going to make them answer for this,” Minister of Public Works Loreto Silva said.
AUSTRIA
Radioactive diapers found
Hazmat specialists called in after Geiger counters on Tuesday showed alarmingly high radiation emanating from a dump truck arriving at an incinerator in Linz have found the problem — radioactive adult diapers. After unloading the truck, firefighters from the city’s hazardous materials unit found nearly two dozen diapers from a hospital that was contaminated with radioactive iodine, which is swallowed during some medical procedures. Unit leader Dieter Jonas said that no one was in danger because of the incident.
GERMANY
Cocaine seized by ‘chance’
Berlin police say they have seized a large haul of cocaine after smugglers apparently made a mistake that sent the drug to supermarkets on Monday. Workers at five stores in and around the city were surprised to find a total of 140kg of cocaine packed into crates of bananas. The head of Berlin’s anti-drugs squad on Tuesday said that the crates had come from Colombia via Hamburg and the discovery was “pure chance.” It is estimated that the drugs have a street value of about 6 million euros (US$8.2 million).
UNITED STATES
N Korean rap video released
What is likely the first rap video ever made in North Korea went online on Tuesday to the delight of the Washington hiphop duo who created it. Anthony Bobb (Pacman) and Dontray Ennis (Peso) posted Escape to North Korea on YouTube on the eve of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s 31st birthday. The duo traveled to North Korea in November last year to shoot their video in Pyongyang with financial help from Kickstarter contributors and a New York hedge fund manager.
CANADA
Oil, propane train derailed
A freight train carrying crude oil and propane derailed and caught fire in a sparsely populated region of New Brunswick on Tuesday, leading to the evacuation of about two dozen homes, authorities said. Sharon DeWitt, emergency measures coordinator for the nearby community of Plaster Rock, said it was unclear how big the fire was or whether anyone was hurt.
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
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
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number