■Indonesia
More Bali suspects charged
Indonesian prosecutors yesterday charged another nine suspects over last year's Bali bombings, including Ali Gufron, the alleged operations chief of the al-Qaeda linked terror group blamed for the attacks. Gufron, alias Mukhlas, is charged with helping to plan and execute the bombings, and could face the death penalty if convicted, chief prosecutor Muhammad Salim told reporters. Local and regional law enforcement officials say Jemaah Islamiyah funded and organized the Oct. 12 attacks, which killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists. The other eight suspects were charged with indirect involvement in the attack, said Salim, adding they face prisons terms of between 12 years and life imprisonment.
■ China
WHO queries SARS figures
The World Health Organization (WHO) yesterday questioned a reported sharp fall in new SARS cases in China, the world's worst-hit country, saying it was "concerned" at how the counting was being done. China yesterday announced just three new cases of SARS, two of them in Beijing. It has gone nine days in a row with fewer than 10 officially reported fresh infections. "We are concerned about how these cases are being counted ... We do not know enough about where these numbers are coming from," WHO spokesman Iain Simpson told journalists. "It may simply be that there has been a dramatic drop off in the number of SARS cases, but clearly because of the way that SARS emerged in China, China has a credibility problem," he said.
■ China
Wife gets sex compensation
A young wife in southern China has been awarded US$1,300 dollars for the loss of her sex life after her electrician husband lost both legs in an accident, a news report said yesterday. The woman sued her 32-year-old husband's employers after her husband fell from a telegraph pole and had to have both legs amputated, the South China Morning Post reported. The accident left him unable to have sex and the woman, from Guangzhou, sued the company over the loss of her right to have sex, the newspaper said.
■ Australia
Famous tree cashes chips
It had stood unharmed by man for almost four centuries. Dominating the lush Tasmanian rainforest, the tree known as El Grande, the largest hardwood plant on earth, was revered by environmentalists and tourists alike. Many came to gape in awe. Not any more. The 79m tree has been accidentally `cooked to death' after a fire started to provide woodchips raged out of control. `This is akin to blasting at a Sydney demolition site and saying "Whoops, we got the Opera House as well,'" said Bob Brown, a senator for Tasmania's Green party.
■ New Zealand
Handyman building missile
A New Zealand home handyman is building a cruise missile in his garage with parts bought over the Internet, and he tells how to do it on his Web site, a newspaper reported yesterday. Bruce Simpson, 49, who lives near Auckland, told the New Zealand Herald he was not building the missiles for terrorism but to test his home-made jet engines. The paper quoted security experts as saying that the ease with which he obtained parts and built a working jet engine was a warning that such weapons could be built by the wrong people. Simpson said anyone with half a brain could build a cruise missile: "You don't have to be a rocket scientist."
■Canada
SARS claims more victims
Health officials reported another death and 10 more cases of SARS in Canada's largest city Monday, and said a public review of how they handled a renewed outbreak of the illness was possible. SARS now has claimed 32 lives in Toronto, including a 60-year-old man who died May 20 and had his case reviewed under increased monitoring for possible undiagnosed patients, said Colin D'Cunha, the Ontario commissioner of public health. D'Cunha reported 62 probable cases of SARS with 6,800 people under home quarantine for possible exposure, an increase of more than 1,500 over the previous day. He also said more than 5,000 health care workers were in ``working quarantine,'' which means they continue working but must wear mask, gown and gloves both inside and outside of hospitals and isolate themselves at home.
■ Italy
McDonald's sues critic
Once the legions marched forward to repel the barbarian hordes; now a lone Italian food critic has ridden out against what he sees as their contemporary equivalent. Edoardo Raspelli is taking on an enemy armed with slick lawyers whose standard is a pair of golden arches. Raspelli, a leading Italian food critic, is being sued by McDonald's, the giant US burger chain, after panning the food they serve to more than half a million Italians each day. Raspelli, who is known for his trenchant dismissal of poor cuisine, was unimpressed by the fare he sampled -- "obscene French fries tasting of cardboard" and "rubbery buns."
■ United Kingdom
Finding a solution that sticks
Move over Spider-Man -- mere mortals may soon be coming to a ceiling near you. Researchers at the University of Manchester say they have cracked the secret of one of the reptile world's greatest climbers, the gecko, and produced a sticky tape that can mimic the lizard's gravity-defying abilities. Soon, people could walk on walls like comic-book superhero Spider-Man, the university said. "The new adhesive -- gecko tape -- contains billions of tiny plastic fibres which are similar to natural hairs covering the soles of geckos' feet," the university said in a statement. "The research team believes it won't be long before Spider-Man gloves become a reality."
■ United Kingdom
Abduction case thrown out
A London court Monday threw out a case against four Romanians and a Kosovan Albanian in connection with an alleged plot to abduct Victoria Beckham, formerly the pop singer Posh Spice and the wife of England football captain David Beckham. Prosecutors said the evidence of a key witness, a Kosovan parking attendant, was unreliable, and Judge Simon Smith expressed criticism regarding payment made to the witness, named as Florim Gashi, 27, by Sunday tabloid News of the World.
■ France
Politician linked to murders
Frances most notorious serial killer has claimed that he murdered at least one victim on the orders of highly placed personalities in Toulouse because of a blackmail threat linked to sadomasochistic orgies involving politicians, judges and police. Dominique Baudis, the city's former mayor and current head of the Conseil Superieur de l'Audiovisuel was among four people named by the murderer, Patrice Alegre, who is serving a life sentence for five killings, involving extreme cruelty, and six rapes.
Agencies
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
RSS