JAPAN
Cat’s head found in fridge
A 16-year-old schoolgirl who allegedly confessed to decapitating a classmate kept a severed cat head in her refrigerator, a report said on Tuesday. The teenager was arrested last week on suspicion of murdering fellow student Aiwa Matsuo, 15, after police discovered her dismembered body on a bed in the suspect’s home in the western city of Sasebo. The grisly case has attracted major media attention in a nation with one of the world’s lowest crime rates, as commentators search for answers to explain the teenager’s pattern of increasingly violent behavior. Some reports have suggested the parents of the girl desperately sought to have her hospitalized, but were rebuffed. On Tuesday, the Mainichi Shimbun said investigators found a severed cat head in a refrigerator and about ¥1 million (US$10,000) in cash at the apartment where the girl lived alone. She had reportedly been living there since April on the advice of psychiatrists after she battered her father with a baseball bat. Her father is believed to have given the cash to his daughter, who reportedly told investigators that she “wanted to dissect someone.”
INDIA
Rats ground passenger jet
Air India has been forced to ground one of its planes after crew spotted rats scurrying around the cabin, the Times of India reported on Tuesday. The plane was on its way from New Delhi to Calcutta when staff became aware of the infestation, the paper said. “Rats on board an aircraft can lead to a catastrophe if they start chewing electric wires,” the paper quoted an unnamed airline official as saying. “If that happens, pilots will have no control of any system on board, leading to a disaster.” No one at the airline was immediately available for comment, but an Air India official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said rats on planes were a “common phenomenon” worldwide and could “get in anywhere.” “They follow the catering vans into the plane when they smell the food,” the official said.
NORWAY
Warm reindeer close tunnel
A major highway in the Arctic has been closed after reindeer invaded a road tunnel seeking refuge from unusually high temperatures. “Our maintenance crew attempted to chase the reindeer out of the tunnel, but it’s hopeless — after a few hours they’re back,” Tor Inge Hellander, the head of maintenance for the road authority, told local paper Finnmark Dagblad. Temperatures in the area exceeded 22?C on Monday and are not expected to fall until tomorrow, capping one of the nation’s warmest summers on record. Drivers must take a detour on a country road around the 2.3km Stallogargo tunnel to reach Hammerfest. “When it’s hot, the reindeer come into the tunnel, but experience shows they leave as soon as it gets colder,” Hellander said. “We can’t keep people there 24 hours a day to chase reindeer.”
GERMANY
Woman takes dip with seals
A woman sneaked into the seal pool at Berlin Zoo on Monday night, risking serious injury to take a swim with the animals after closing time, zoo authorities said. A witness told German daily Bild: “I watched as the woman stripped to her bikini and then lowered herself into the seal pool. Further back was a man taking photos.” Zoo staff failed to catch the woman, said Ragnar Kuehne, a zoo manager, but would have called the police if they had. “The woman could have been seriously injured if the seals had bitten her,” he said. The woman took her dip at 7:30pm, half an hour after the zoo had closed.
UNITED STATES
Python woman crashes car
A woman who crashed her Toyota Prius into a firehouse with a stolen python wrapped around her neck pleaded not guilty to charges including reckless endangerment and larceny on Tuesday, officials said. Sarah Espinosa, 22, from Albany, New York, drove over the center median on the Jericho Turnpike on Long Island late on Monday and plowed through the garage door of the New Hyde Park Fire House, damaging two fire trucks, authorities said. “Fire personnel who were present at the time of the accident rendered aid to the victim, at which time they discovered a small ball python snake wrapped around the defendant’s neck,” police said. Firefighters removed the snake and Espinosa was transported to a local hospital, police said. She was charged with reckless driving, driving while intoxicated and unlawful possession of marijuana in addition to reckless endangerment in the second degree and petty larceny. Police said they were not sure if the snake had been strangling Espinosa and caused her to crash, or if her driving was impaired by intoxication. Espinosa is accused of stealing the snake from a nearby PETCO store, police said.
UNITED STATES
Cross-dressing thief guilty
A Maryland man who dressed up as a woman to fleece intoxicated passengers for more than US$200,000 while driving a taxi in Washington pleaded guilty on Monday to first-degree felony fraud, according to the US Attorney’s Office. Fifty-year-old Nyerere Mitchell, of Clinton, Maryland, stole PIN codes and ATM cards from more than 60 people between April 2009 and November last year, prosecutors said. Wearing a woman’s wig and a padded bra as a disguise, Mitchell drove a silver Range Rover SUV and focused on picking up young people near popular bar and nightclub areas, prosecutors said. Mitchell was charged with five counts of fraud, with each charge carrying a maximum of 10 years in prison.
UNITED STATES
Teens charged in killings
Three New Mexico teenagers who are accused of beating to death two sleeping homeless men were indicted on Tuesday. A grand jury returned indictments that included first-degree murder, armed robbery, aggravated assault and battery and numerous other counts. District Attorney Kari Brandenburg said the 15 and 16-year-old suspects are to be tried alongside 18-year-old Alex Rios in adult court because they were charged as serious youthful offenders and indicted on the first-degree murder charges. Rios and the two younger suspects are charged with attacking three homeless men as they slept on July 19 in a vacant lot that was a regular camping ground for transients. The 15-year-old said the trio used cinderblocks to beat the men for more than an hour, police said, reportedly taking turns dropping them on the men’s faces. The third victim survived the attack.
UNITED STATES
Tot loses re-election bid
Robert “Bobby” Tufts may have lost his bid for a third consecutive term as mayor of his tiny northern Minnesota tourist town, but the five-year-old is not taking it too hard. After helping raise money for local charities and declaring ice cream the top of the food pyramid, it was just time to move on, he said. “It was fun, but it’s time to pass on the vote,” Bobby said on Monday, a day after he lost the annual election in Dorset. Bobby’s rule was purely ceremonial, because Dorset has no formal city government.
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
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
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