UNITED KINGDOM
Elton John, Furnish wed
Pop legend Elton John on Sunday married David Furnish, exactly nine years since their civil partnership, with celebrities, including David and Victoria Beckham and actor Hugh Grant, attending the ceremony. The 67-year-old singer posted live updates of the event on photo-sharing Web site Instagram, including the couple holding hands in front of guests with the caption “The exchange of vows. #ShareTheLove.” A fleet of luxury cars whisked the A-list guests through the gates of the couple’s estate in Windsor, west of London.
UNITED KINGDOM
Actress Whitelaw dies
Actress Billie Whitelaw, famous for her intense collaboration with playwright Samuel Beckett, who wrote several roles for her, died on Sunday, aged 82, her son told the BBC. Described by Beckett as the “perfect actress,” Whitelaw became the playwright’s muse and they created a series of experimental performances together. One of the most famous was in a Beckett’s monologue Not I, in which only her mouth was visible to the theater audience. “This relentless mouth that wouldn’t let go,” she told a later interview. “He was so demanding, he was so meticulous, if you said an ‘oh’ instead of an ‘ah’ ... from the stalls you’d hear ‘Oh lord’ or you’d see his head going down into his hands.” Whitelaw’s career on stage and screen won her a series of awards and spanned more than half a century, from playing a demonic nanny in The Omen, to the mother of the notorious gangsters in The Krays to her most recent appearance in comedy Hot Fuzz in 2007.
UNITED STATES
ISS crew print out ratchet
There may be no corner hardware store at the International Space Station (ISS), but that does not mean the astronauts cannot get what they need. In a first, the crew was able to craft a new tool, using their specially designed Zero-G 3D printer and a design e-mailed from the ground. The tool, a ratchet, was designed by Made in Space, the California company that created the 3D printer on board the orbiting space lab. The 3D printer has been used on the space station before, but only for designs that were tested and loaded before it left Earth. This time, the tool was designed and tested on the ground and then e-mailed to the printer, which spit it out in about four hours, the company said in a statement. “The ratchet was designed as one print with movable parts without any support material,” the company said. “The parts and mechanisms of the ratchet had to be enclosed to prevent pieces from floating in the microgravity environment.”
UNITED STATES
Policeman shot, run over
A fugitive trying to evade an arrest warrant shot a police officer and then ran him over, killing the officer, the Tarpon Springs, Florida, police department said. Marco Antonio Parilla Jr, 23, crashed his car into a pole and another vehicle after running over officer Charles Kondek early on Sunday. Parilla was arrested on suspicion of first-degree murder. Authorities said Kondek responded to a noise call at about 2am at an apartment complex. Parilla was pounding on doors, looking for a neighbor who had reported him to police, authorities said. When Parilla saw Kondek, he fired multiple rounds at the officer, striking him once above his bulletproof vest. According to the Florida Department of Corrections, Parilla served more than two years in prison for several offenses, including drug charges, and was released in March. He was listed as a fugitive for violating his probation.
AUSTRALIA
Bail revoked in hostage case
A court yesterday ordered bail revoked for the partner of a self-styled sheikh who last week stormed a Sydney cafe at gunpoint, sparking a 16-hour hostage crisis that left three people dead, including the gunman. Amirah Droudis, on bail after being charged with the murder of hostage-taker Man Haron Monis’ wife, was ordered by a Sydney court returned to jail to await trial. Monis, who had been charged as an accessory to the murder, had also been free on bail. The perceived failure of the justice system to prevent Monis, a convicted felon well known to authorities, from seizing a cafe in the city’s financial district in broad daylight has sparked calls for a tightening of the bail system.
CHINA
More than 30,000 detained
Authorities have detained more than 30,000 people during a two-month clamp down on pornography and gambling, Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday. In the latest arrests, police in Guangdong Province arrested 3,014 and put more than 8,000 in criminal detention as of Monday last week, Xinhua reported the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department as saying. In Huizhou City, police busted an online gambling ring involving 30 million yuan (US$4.8 million) on Nov. 24.
CHINA
Bo’s mansion up for sale
A lavish French villa owned by disgraced politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has been put up for sale for more than 6.95 million euros (US$8.5 million), the Global Times reported yesterday, after his spectacular fall from grace. Bo, once the Chinese Communist Party boss of the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing, was sentenced to life in prison last year after he was found guilty of corruption and abuse of power in one of the nation’s most serious political scandals in a generation. The government had vowed to confiscate the mansion, but it was unclear who put it up for sale or whether the government had made any progress in its effort to seize the property.
PHILIPPINES
Arroyo home for Christmas
Detained former president Gloria Arroyo will be allowed home for Christmas after a court decided to show “compassion” ahead of Pope Francis’ visit to the country next month. Arroyo has been under arrest since 2011 on charges of vote-rigging and corruption, and is being held in a government hospital, where she is receiving treatment for a rare bone disease. The 67-year-old, who was president from 2001 to 2010, will be able to stay at her home in Manila from today to Friday “for humanitarian reasons,” special anti-graft court clerk Estela Rosete said. She quoted a court resolution saying the leave was granted “in light of the forthcoming visit of his holiness, Pope Francis, who is the personification of mercy and compassion.”
INDONESIA
Cleaner jailed for abuse
A cleaner was jailed for seven years yesterday over the sexual abuse of a young boy at one of the nation’s most prestigious international schools, in a scandal that has rocked Jakarta’s expatriate community. Judge Mohamad Yunus said that Afrischa Setyani, the only female cleaner among five defendants, “was found guilty of assisting in violence and sexual abuse of children.” “We sentenced her to seven years in prison and a fine of 100 million rupiah [US$8,000],” he said. Canadian Neil Bantleman, an administrator, and Indonesian teaching assistant Ferdinand Tjiong are also on trial separately, accused of sexually assaulting children.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not