UNITED KINGDOM
Writers share comic award
Satires set in financial-crisis Ireland and the high-end art world share this year’s Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction, whose rewards include a bottle of champagne and a pig. Paul Murray’s The Mark of the Void and Hannah Rothschild’s The Improbability of Love were yesterday named the award’s first joint winners. The authors will not have to split the porcine prize for the award, named in honor of comic novelist P.G. Wodehouse. Murray and Rothschild will each be presented with a Gloucester Old Spot pig named after their book during a ceremony on Saturday next week at the Hay Festival of literature in Wales. They will each also receive a jeroboam of champagne and a set of Wodehouse novels.
UNITED STATES
Celebrity hacker guilty
A Pennsylvania man on Tuesday pleaded guilty to hacking into the e-mail and online accounts of several female celebrities and stealing private information, including nude photographs and videos. Ryan Collins, 36, was accused of gaining access to more than 100 Google and Apple accounts from November 2012 to September 2014. Prosecutors say there was no evidence that Collins posted any of the pilfered images online or shared any information he obtained. No date was set for sentencing.
CANADA
More firefighters to help out
Officials said that about 1,000 additional fire crews from across the nation, the US and South Africa will be joining the fight this week against a massive wildfire near Fort McMurray. Alberta wildlife official Chad Morrison on Tuesday said the blaze continues to move northeast away from communities and oil sands facilities in northern Alberta. He says cooler temperatures have aided the fire fight. The fire has grown to about 5,230km2, with 25km2 spreading into Saskatchewan. That includes areas already burned and currently burning.
UNITED STATES
Violence at anti-Trump rally
Protests outside a rally for Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump in New Mexico turned violent on Tuesday night as demonstrators threw burning T-shirts, plastic bottles and other items at police officers, overturned trash cans and knocked down barricades. Police responded by firing pepper spray and smoke grenades into the crowd outside the Albuquerque Convention Center. During the rally, Trump was interrupted repeatedly by protesters, who shouted, held up banners and resisted removal by security officers. The banners included the messages “Trump is Fascist” and “We’ve heard enough.” Trump told security to remove the protesters, mocking their actions by telling them to “Go home to mommy.”
UNITED STATES
Teen shooter gets 38 years
An 18-year-old has been sentenced to 38 years in prison for fatally shooting an Iraqi man taking photos of his first snowfall in Texas. A Dallas County jury deliberated for about two hours on Tuesday before sentencing Nykerion Nealon, a Dallas-Fort Worth television station reported. On Monday, the jury found Nealon guilty of murder in Ahmed al-Jumaili’s death. Nealon could have been sentenced to up to life in prison. Al-Jumaili was outside his Dallas apartment complex taking pictures of snow with his wife and brother on March 4 last year when he was shot. Al-Jumaili fled violence in Iraq to reunite with his wife and had been in Texas just three weeks when he was killed.
AUSTRALIA
Nine years for kidnap-rape
A man who kidnapped, drugged and raped a German backpacker was sentenced yesterday to nine years in prison for the attack. Peter van de Wetering, 48, had pleaded guilty to multiple charges, including rape and kidnapping, for the August 2013 attack on the 19-year-old woman two weeks after she arrived in the country. Prosecutors said the man spent months planning the attack, seeking out a remote location to carry out the crime and buying a wig, fake beard and moustache to use as a disguise. Despite Van de Wetering’s guilty plea, the judge said he had shown no remorse for the assault, which left the woman with physical and emotional scars.
INDONESIA
Thirteen bird species at risk
Thirteen species of indigenous birds, including the nation’s symbolic Javan hawk-eagle, are at serious risk of extinction mainly due to the pet trade, wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC said yesterday. Increasing demand for some species as pets has led to dramatic population declines, TRAFFIC said in a new study. “This is a multimillion-dollar industry, there’s a huge criminal element and many people are profiting illegally from this business,” said Chris Shepherd, TRAFFIC’s director for Southeast Asia and a coauthor of the study. The law bans the hunting of birds in the wild and selling them as pets, but critics say the law is often flouted, and major bird markets in cities still operate freely.
AUSTRALIA
Town invaded by bats
More than 100,000 bats have descended on the New South Wales town of Batemans Bay, with one local politician declaring it a disaster after residents were hit with a wave of dirt and destruction. The flying foxes have caused power outages, kept tourists away and hit property prices in the south coast town, according to the television channel Seven News. “Well, I think it’s a natural disaster. It’s a disaster for residents, it’s a disaster for the flora and fauna,” local member of parliament Andrew Constance said. The bats, a protected species, set up a colony in the town years ago, but numbers have multiplied over time, media said.
CHINA
Yang Jiang dies at 104
Renowned writer Yang Jiang (楊絳), known for her prolific output and marriage to equally famous author Chien Chung-shu (錢鍾書), died yesterday at age 104, state media said. Yang died at Peking Union Medical College Hospital in Beijing, according to The Paper, a state-owned news Web site. Born in 1911, Yang became a household name for her novels, plays, essays and translated works. She was the first to translate Don Quixote into Chinese, and her version is still considered the definitive one by many.
AUSTRALIA
No end to war on terrier
Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce yesterday boasted that he had got into Johnny Depp’s head like fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter after the actor quipped that the ruddy-faced lawmaker appeared to be “inbred with a tomato.” The exchange is the latest in a war of words that started a year ago when Joyce threatened to have Depp’s pet dogs, Boo and Pistol, put down after they had been smuggled into the country, an episode since described as a “war on terrier.” “I’m inside his head, I’m pulling little strings and pulling little levers. Long after I’ve forgotten about Mr Depp, he’s remembering me,” Joyce said in his home town of Tamworth. “I’m turning into his Hannibal Lecter.”
‘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