THAILAND
Jellyfish kills German tourist
A 20-year-old German tourist has died after being stung by a poisonous box jellyfish off Koh Samui, police said yesterday, the third known fatality in the nation in just over a year. The woman was pronounced dead late on Tuesday at a private hospital on the island after the attack during a nighttime swim at Lamai beach. “Doctors said she died due to poison from a box jellyfish,” said Lieutenant Thanakorn Patnankaew, a tourist police officer on the island. He added that local officials have since traveled to nearby beaches to warn tourists to be more cautious while swimming, though such stings are rare. The German consulate in Phuket confirmed that one of its citizens was killed due to a fatal jellyfish sting, but could provide no further details. The box jellyfish has trailing tentacles 2m to 3m long that can pack a lethal sting for swimmers. It feeds on small fish and crustaceans.
SINGAPORE
Dad charged with murder
A Belgian financial executive was charged yesterday with murdering his five-year-old son, an offense punishable by hanging. Philippe Graffart, 41, was accused of killing his son, Keryan, at an upmarket condominium between Monday night and Tuesday morning. He has been remanded for psychiatric observation at the medical complex in Changi Prison. Local media reported the boy was found strangled, with hand-shaped bruises around his neck, and Graffart was believed to have been fighting for custody of his son with his former wife. Graffart was arrested before dawn on Tuesday after showing up with self-inflicted wounds outside a police station, the Straits Times said.
AFGHANISTAN
Bodies uncovered at palace
The presidential palace said skulls and bones belonging to two bodies have been uncovered beneath a kitchen during renovation work on the palace grounds. The identity and cause of death of the skeletons are a mystery. Tuesday’s palace statement said the remains have been sent for forensic examination. It also said that a commission, including representatives of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and Physicians for Human Rights, had been set up to identify the bodies. The nation has had a long history of unearthing mass graves of unidentified victims of war, many linked to former warlords. In 2002, about 2,000 bodies were found in a mass grave, believed to be Taliban fighters killed after being taken prisoner during fighting that overturned their six-year regime.
SWEDEN
Nobel blunder recounted
With two men with the same name and a wrong number, a Nobel prize can easily fall into the wrong hands, as was the case when the Nobel Prize in Physics was accidentally awarded to an economist. In an interview with the Nobel Foundation broadcast on Tuesday, 1989 physics laureate Norman Ramsey recalled how the prize committee had first contacted another Norman Ramsey by mistake. “They had guessed maybe I might be in Washington DC. There was a Norman Ramsey there and the chairman of the committee called him,” he recounted in the interview conducted in 2005. At about 6am, the son of that Norman Ramsey picked up the telephone and was hesitant to wake his father. “And they said we want to tell him he’s received the Nobel Prize in Physics. This young man said: ‘That’s very interesting since my father’s an economist,’” the laureate said. The real laureate died in 2011 aged 96. He received the prize for his work on atomic clocks.
UNITED STATES
Lawsuit filed against Cosby
A woman on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against Bill Cosby alleging sexual assault, saying the veteran comedian drugged and molested her at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles in 2008, when she was a minor. The civil lawsuit, filed at US District Court in California’s Central District, charges Cosby with “childhood sexual abuse,” demanding a jury trial and damages exceeding US$75,000. Chloe Goins joins more than 50 women who have come forward publicly over the past year with allegations against the now 78-year-old Cosby, including drugging, sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape. In most cases, the incidents date back decades, putting them outside the statute of limitations for legal action, but Goins’ allegations, coming within eight years of her turning 18, fall within California’s legal code.
UNITED STATES
Python attacks store owner
The owner of a Kentucky reptile store had to be rescued by police after a 6m-long python weighing up to 57kg wrapped around him, authorities said. Terry Wilkins was tangled up with the snake when two police officers arrived at the Captive Born Reptiles store in Newport, Kentucky, a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio, at about midday on Monday. “When officers arrived on the scene, they located the victim who was totally unconscious with a large snake wrapped around his head and neck,” according to a Newport police report. The officers grabbed the snake by the head and unwrapped it from Wilkins, who was not breathing, the report said. He began to breathe as rescue squad workers arrived, it said. Wilkins was treated at a Cincinnati hospital with nearly two-dozen stitches to his arm where the snake bit him and went home later on Monday, according to a colleague. The police report said a woman who was with Wilkins at the time told an investigator he was cleaning the snake’s glass cage when it clamped onto his arm. Wilkins told her to fill a bleach bottle with hot water to help get the snake to release him, but she did not have enough water initially and when she returned from refilling the bottle, the snake had wrapped itself around Wilkins and began choking him, the report said. The snake was unharmed.
UNITED STATES
Female kidnapper sentenced
A former day care worker convicted of abducting a five-year-old girl from her Philadelphia kindergarten classroom and sexually assaulting her has been sentenced to 40 years to life in prison. Prosecutors believe 22-year-old Christina Regusters donned a Muslim dress and veil to impersonate the girl’s mother and take her from the public school classroom in January 2013. Regusters on Monday apologized, but said she is not a “monster.” She said her only role was taking the child from school and leaving her half-naked the next morning at a playground. The girl said: “I think what she did to me was wrong, and I think she should not do it to anyone else.”
UNITED STATES
Hanks to return student ID
If your name is Lauren, then actor Tom Hanks is looking for you — but only if you lost your student identification card. WNBC-TV reports Hanks on Tuesday found a card belonging to a Fordham University student and tweeted a photograph of it to find its owner. Hanks said: “I found your Student ID in the park.” He said that, if it is still needed, his office would get it back to her. The photograph has been retweeted more than 3,000 times.
‘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
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
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in