Turkey
Man shoots at teahouse
Police were on Monday hunting a man who sprayed a teahouse in the northwest of the country with bullets after he took umbrage for being charged “double” for a glass of traditional tea. A fight erupted between the man and the owner of the teahouse in Kocaeli Province near Istanbul when he was asked to pay two Turkish lira (US$0.65) for a glass of tea — usually sold for half that price at teahouses across the country. The angry man was ushered out by his friends, but returned minutes later, firing four times at the teahouse from inside his car, before driving off, the Sabah daily reported. An elderly person sitting at the teahouse at the time of the attack was injured in the ear, Sabah reported. Police were still looking for the suspect.
JAPAN
World’s oldest man dies
The world’s oldest man, who died at the age of 112, said his secret to a long life was not to smoke, drink or overdo it. Yasutaro Koide, born on March 13, 1903, died two months short of his 113th birthday. Koide worked as a tailor when he was younger. He was recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s oldest man in August. The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said he died early yesterday at a hospital in Nagoya, central Japan, where he had been treated for chronic heart problems. In Japan, 111-year-old Tokyo native Masamitsu Yoshida, born on May 30, 1904, succeeds Koide as the oldest man. It was not immediately known whether Yoshida is also the world’s oldest male. Japan, a rapidly aging country, has more than 61,000 centenarians, according to the nation’s family registration records. Nearly 90 percent are women. The world’s oldest person is an American woman, 116-year-old Susannah Mushatt Jones of Brooklyn, New York.
JAPAN
Documentary star arrested
The star of an Oscar-winning documentary about dolphin killings in Japan has been detained by immigration authorities at an airport near Tokyo. Ric O’Barry is the former dolphin trainer for the Flipper TV series and star of The Cove. The film shows the slaughter of dolphins herded into a cove in the coastal fishing village of Taiji. He was barred entry early yesterday. Immigration officials said it is their policy not to comment on individual cases. O’Barry’s lawyer Takashi Takano said he has appealed the decision. He said immigration officials at Narita airport say O’Barry is not a tourist, the visa he was using to enter Japan. O’Barry told Takano that the officials accused him of having close relations with anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd, which O’Barry denies.
INDIA
Student’s death protested
Hundreds of students are angrily protesting the death of an Indian student who, along with four others, was barred from using some facilities at his university in the southern tech-hub of Hyderabad. The protesters accused Hyderabad University’s vice chancellor along with a government minister of unfairly demanding punishment for the five lower-caste students after they clashed last year with a group of students supporting the governing Hindu nationalist party. Police are investigating whether the officials had any role in the 26-year-old student’s death, which they say was a suicide. He had been a member of a group representing Dalits, the lowest caste in India’s Hindu caste hierarchy. The demonstrations yesterday in Hyderabad drew nationwide attention with TV channels running urgent updates throughout the morning.MEXICO
‘Survivor’ conviction upheld
A Mexican state court has denied an appeal and upheld a 12-year prison sentence for a former Survivor producer convicted of killing his wife on a 2010 Cancun beach vacation. State prosecutors in Quintana Roo on Monday said that the state supreme court had upheld the sentence handed down against Bruce Beresford-Redman in March last year. Beresford-Redman was convicted of killing his Brazilian-born wife, Monica Burgos Beresford-Redman, on a family vacation. Her body was found in a sewer cistern at the resort where they were staying. Bruce Beresford-Redman’s attorney in Mexico confirmed the appeal’s denial on Monday in a statement. Lawyer Jaime Cancino Leon said there was no evidence to support the verdict and the trial was plagued by irregularities. He said they would file another round of appeals.
UNITED STATES
Don McLean arrested
Don McLean, the author and singer of the enigmatic hit song American Pie, was arrested on Monday for domestic violence in the state of Maine, US media reported. The 70-year-old was detained without incident after police responded to a call at his residence in the city of Camden, local news affiliate Fox411 said, quoting the city police chief. He was then taken to nearby Knox County Jail and released on bail, it said. Celebrity gossip Web site TMZ reported that bail had been set at US$10,000. McLean is scheduled to appear in court on Feb. 22. American Pie was named the fifth-greatest song of the 20th century by the Recording Industry of America and the National Endowment of the Arts, and was also inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002. The original manuscript for the 1971 song sold at auction in New York in April for US$1.2 million.
COSTA RICA
Murder suspects to be retried
The nation is to next week retry seven men suspected in the 2013 murder of a conservationist and the rape of four women with him, justice officials said on Monday. The crime occurred on Moin Beach just to the north of the seaside city of Limon in May 2013 and dealt a bad blow to the country’s tourism image. Jairo Mora, a 26-year-old Costa Rican environmentalist working to protect sea turtle nests, was beaten unconscious, tied to a pick-up truck and dragged along the beach until he suffocated in the sand. The four female volunteers with him — three Americans and a Spaniard — were tied up, held for hours and raped by the assailants. An appeals court ordered the retrial after overturning an acquittal for the seven suspects in January last year. The judge in the original trial found serious errors in the police investigation: key evidence had mysteriously gone missing and the suspects’ telephone calls were incorrectly logged. Prosecutors say the suspects belonged to a poaching gang that looted sea turtle nests and sold the eggs.
MOROCCO
Paris attack suspect detained
Officials announced on Monday that they had detained a Belgian man thought to be a close friend of one of the leaders of the attacks in Paris on Nov. 13. The man, whom Belgian and Moroccan news sources identified as Gelel Attar, is of Belgian and Moroccan background, as were most of those who participated in the attacks. Attar was sentenced in absentia at a trial last summer in Belgium to five years in prison for involvement in a terrorist network. Two of the Paris attackers were also sentenced in absentia in that trial: Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who helped organize the attacks, and Chakib Akrouh, one of the attackers.
‘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