AUSTRALIA
Con man sent to prison
A man who promoted fake slimming products was convicted yesterday of assaulting police officers and resisting arrest during his recent capture after a year on the run. Peter Foster, 52, has been on the loose since failing to show up for a sentencing hearing late last year after he was convicted for flouting a 2005 ban on him participating in the weight-loss industry. He was sentenced in his absence. Police found Foster hiding in scrub on Tuesday near the resort town of Byron Bay, 800km north of Sydney. A scuffle followed. His long gray hair and beard were disheveled when Foster appeared in a hospital gown to plead guilty yesterday at Tweed Heads Magistrates Court. He spent Tuesday night in hospital for observation, before he was returned to police custody yesterday. The magistrate did not impose a sentence for the convictions, saying that Foster would be taken to prison to serve his previous three-year sentence.
CHINA
Serial jumper arrested
A man staged repeated suicide attempts to extort cash, reports said yesterday, provoking some online commentators to applaud his business acumen, while others called on him to jump to his death. The 47-year-old, surnamed Li, was pictured on different sets of scaffolding around tall buildings after news of his arrest emerged and mocking media nicknamed him “Brother Building-jumper.” “Li would often make his suicide threats in busy public places or on open construction sites, and demand cash from owners or his rescuers,” the state-run Global Times said, citing police. The former air conditioner installer has carried out the scam in more than seven provinces since 2011, the newspaper said, without giving a total number of fake suicide attempts. Police in the central province of Jiangxi arrested him when he threatened to jump from the sixth floor of a building under construction over claims for unpaid back pay, it added. Li was said to have extorted 12,000 yuan (US$1,963) in total.
INDIA
Thieves tunnel into bank
Police on Tuesday were hunting for thieves who tunneled into a bank and fled with valuables worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The robbers dug a 40m tunnel from a nearby house into the state-run Punjab National Bank in northern Haryana state and stole cash, jewelry and other items over the weekend, local media reported. Police estimate that the thieves’ haul is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. “The job of the thieves was made easy as the floor of the locker room was an ordinary cement floor commonly seen in houses,” said Arun Nehra, a senior state police official. “It was easily punctured by the robbers,” who used low-tech iron tools, he said. The robbers emptied 77 of more than 350 lockers in the raid, Nehra said, adding the exact value of the stolen items had still to be calculated.
SRI LANKA
Mudslide kills at least 10
A mudslide triggered by monsoon rains buried scores of workers’ houses at a tea estate yesterday, killing at least 10 people and causing fears that 250 others are missing, officials said. The mudslide struck at about 7:30am and wiped out 120 workers’ homes at the Meeribedda tea estate in Badulla District, 218km east of Colombo, said Lal Sarath Kumara, an official from the Disaster Management Center. Ten people have been confirmed dead and 250 others are feared to be buried, with a vast area covered by earth, Kumara said. The military has mobilized troops to help with the rescue operation.
ISRAEL
Cult leader sent to jail
A court sentenced a polygamist cult leader to 30 years in prison on Tuesday for multiple sexual offences including rape, indecent assault and incest, media reports said. Goel Ratzon’s lawyer said she would study the ruling before deciding whether to lodge an appeal. Ratzon, 64, was charged in 2010 with enslaving and sexually abusing 21 women he considered to be his wives — although he was never officially married — and the 38 children he fathered with them. He was convicted last month on several counts of rape and other sex crimes against six women and girls, but acquitted on the enslavement charge. “Most of the women were minors at the time of the crimes; some were his own daughters,” Haaretz newspaper said. Prosecutors say Ratzon created an image of himself as someone who had magical powers with which he could heal or hurt the women, whom he raped and sexually abused and who mothered his children.
NORWAY
Web cam watches mountain
The country, which provided TV viewers with five hours of knitting live, showing a fire burning itself out and minute-by-minute salmon fishing, has found a new attraction — a rockslide on a mountain. However, no one knows when it will happen. For days, local media have focused Web cams on the isolated, rubbly mountainside of Mannen in the west of the country. National broadcaster NRK is streaming it live on its Web site. Last week, 11 people were evacuated from the area, now declared a no-go zone. Web cams cannot guarantee a good show. It might happen at night, and daytime viewing could be hampered by thick rain and mist. As darkness fell on Tuesday, a tiny rockslide lasting 15 seconds was the big news of the day.
UNITED KINGDOM
‘Naked Rambler’ loses fight
A man who has spent a total of seven years in jail for going naked in public lost his legal battle to wear no clothes on Tuesday as Europe’s human rights court told him he must respect the feelings of others. Stephen Gough, dubbed “The Naked Rambler” by British media for his bid to trek the length of the country wearing no more than a hat and bulky rucksack, has faced about 30 convictions for public order disturbances and other offences. Gough said that European laws on respect for private life and freedom of expression gave him the right to nudity. However, the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights ruled that they did not apply, given his “deliberately repetitive antisocial conduct.”
UNITED KINGDOM
Vicars do not believe in God
Two percent of Anglican clergy do not believe in God, according to a poll on Tuesday in which dozens of respondents said they were “not sure ‘God’ is more than a human construct.” Asked to choose the statement that most closely resembled their beliefs, 9 percent also chose the phrase “No-one can know what God is like.” The majority, 83 percent, chose: “There is a personal God,” while 3 percent went for: “There is some sort of spirit or life force.” The survey of 1,500 Anglican clergy by the polling company YouGov and the University of Lancaster was carried out in August and last month. David Paterson, a retired Church of England priest from the Sea of Faith network which rejects the traditional belief in one personal God and claims to represent dozens of vicars, said he saw no contradiction. “I preach using God’s terminology, but never with the suggestion that God actually exists,” he told the University Times, Trinity College Dublin’s newspaper.
‘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
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
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