■ Australia
Injured BASE jumper dies
An Australian parachutist critically injured in a jump from China's tallest building earlier this month died yesterday in a Canberra hospital. World-renowned BASE jumper Roland "Slim" Simpson, 34, had been declared brain dead shortly after a failed jump from Shanghai's 421m Jinmao Tower on Oct. 5. Simpson was among 38 BASE jumpers from 16 nations invited to jump from the tower. Simpson had made more then 1,200 jumps. In BASE jumping -- an acronym for building, antenna, span and earth -- people skydive from a permanent surface rather than from an aircraft.
■ Singapore
Hoax caller goes to jail
A food seller in Singapore has been jailed for a year for making a hoax call claiming a group of truck drivers delivering ice from Malaysia were actually planning to bomb the city-state, the Straits Times reported yesterday. Ang Teck Lee, 42, pleaded guilty in court on Friday to lying to police when he rang an emergency hotline last month. The Singapore government, a staunch US ally in the war against terrorism, has frequently warned its citizens the city-state is a target for extremists.
■ China
HK, China agree on rulings
Hong Kong and China have agreed to recognize each other's civil court rulings, newspapers reported yesterday. Although the former British colony was returned to Chinese rule in 1997, Hong Kong maintains separate legal, political and economic systems from the mainland. Huang Song, vice president of China's Supreme People's Court, announced the agreement to recognize each other's civil rulings after meeting with representatives from the Hong Kong Bar Association in Beijing on Friday. But he said the two sides are still negotiating the scope of the deal, with Hong Kong resisting China's demands to include rulings on copyright violations, labor disputes and public listings, the Sing Tao Daily reported.
■ Japan
BSE testing discussed
Japan and the US narrowed their differences over testing standards for mad-cow disease and agreed to work toward reopening Japanese markets to US beef after three days of arduous talks that ended yesterday. Meanwhile, a dairy cow from western Japan tested positive for the bovine disease in preliminary tests, an official said. If confirmed, the cow from Mie prefecture would be Japan's 15th animal with the fatal brain-wasting illness, known formally as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. US and Japanese officials reviewed a Japanese proposal to exempt cows younger than 20 months from testing.
■ Australia
Evidence of infected vaccine
The Australian government said yesterday it will investigate a report that a polio vaccine contaminated with a virus linked to cancers was knowingly released by a government agency in the 1960s. The Age newspaper said it had uncovered evidence that almost three million doses of the Salk polio vaccine produced between 1956 and 1962 were contaminated by a monkey virus linked to a range of cancers. At least four batches of the vaccine contaminated by the virus known as Simian Virus 40 or SV40 were knowingly released by the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories. Research conducted by the laboratories in 1962, but never made public, reportedly showed the monkey virus was a potential cause of cancer in humans.
■ United Nations
Training request rejected
The UN won't train judges or prosecutors for the Iraqi tribunal set up to try Saddam Hussein and members of his regime because it has no mandate to do so and doesn't work with courts that can impose the death penalty, a UN spokesman said Friday. "The Secretary-General recently stated that UN officials should not be directly involved in lending assistance to any court or tribunal that is empowered to impose the death penalty," Stephane Dujarric said at a press conference. Dujarric said the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, based in The Hague, Netherlands, had been asked to train Iraqi prosecutors and judges.
■ United Kingdom
Rosary not fashion: church
The rosary is not a fashion item, the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales says in a leaflet, after David Beckham and Britney Spears were seen wearing them as necklaces and bracelets. The Daily Telegraph reported yesterday that the church had issued the leaflet stressing the religious significance of the rosary after Chriin Ipswich the manager a Christian bookshop, told the Telegraph: "We have sold more than 100 rosary beads in the past six weeks. We normally sell about three dozen in April and May, when people have them for their first communion, and then the odd one during the rest of the year."
■ Italy
Statue called a masterpiece
Almost two decades of detective work, triggered by a Latin poem found in the Vatican archives, has led experts to conclude that a statue that had stood unnoticed for five centuries in a small southern Italian town is the work of a Renaissance master. A new book by an Italian gallery director attributes the life-size statue to the 15th century artist Andrea Mantegna, whose paintings demonstrate a special genius for the creation of three-dimensional illusions. Until recently, none of Mantegna's sculptures was thought to have survived. David Landau, who chaired the 1992 exhibition of Mantegna's works at the Royal Academy in London, said he had not yet studied the stone carving at first hand.
■ United Kingdom
Children used to carry drugs
Drug dealers in Gloucestershire in the west of England, are using children as young as four to deliver packets of heroin for them, a police officer said Friday. Detective Sergeant John Roberts is head of Gloucestershire's new policing priority unit, principally aimed at tackling the drugs problem. Since its launch in June, the nine-strong team has arrested more than 100 people and carried out over 140 stop and searches. Detective Sergeant Roberts said the unit's tough stance on street dealing was making it increasingly difficult for drug pushers to operate in public. However, they were becoming more devious by using child couriers.
■ France
Vaccination supply good
While patients are panicking over a shortage of flu vaccines in the US, vaccination programs in Europe are progressing smoothly with a good supply of medicine, health authorities say. Unlike childhood vaccinations, which are standardized and tracked by the international health agency, flu vaccine is purchased from a number of manufacturers by individual countries and prescribed somewhat differently in each place.
■ United States
Lenny Kravitz in the poo
Singer Lenny Kravitz is being sued by a neighbor for US$333,849 in water damage caused when Kravitz's toilet backed up in their SoHo apartment building on Crosby Street, according to a lawsuit filed in Manhattan Civil Court this week. In the suit, the Amica Mutual Insurance Co seeks to recover the money it says its client -- Kravitz's neighbor -- spent repairing damage to his apartment, caused when Kravitz allowed the overflow. The suit said that the water damage was "catastrophic." It alleges that in early August Kravitz allowed "a commode to become blocked, clogged, and congested with various materials."
■ United States
Bono finds stolen lyrics
It took 23 years, but U2 frontman Bono has finally found what he was looking for: a briefcase full of lyrics and notes stolen from the band during a US concert. Bono said this week that the bag with the lyrics for the October album had been handed to the band in Portland, Oregon, by Cindy Harris, 44, who said that she found it in the attic of a rental home in Tacoma, Washington, in 1981. Harris said she did not know the notes had been stolen until many years later and then she had no idea how to reach the band. Her friend Danielle Rheaume spent much of the past year contacting U2's management.
■ United States
`Hammer' hammers home
A boxer who fights under the nickname "The Harlem Hammer" pleaded not guilty on Friday to charges that he used a hammer to murder a freelance sports writer and then set fire to his Hollywood apartment. James Butler, 31, was charged with murder and arson following his Wednesday arrest and was being held on US$1.25 million bail. Sam Kellerman, 29, was found dead last Sunday at his apartment. A spokeswoman said Butler and the sports writer were friends, and that the boxer had been staying at Kellerman's apartment since late September. Butler is best known for punching an opponent in November 2001 after losing a charity match.
■ United States
No flu shot for mayor's ma
She's 95 years old, her son is the mayor of New York City, and that son also has a prominent school of public health named after him. But Charlotte Bloomberg still can't seem to get a flu shot. "She's been calling around, unable to get a flu shot, and she's 95," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Friday during a weekly radio appearance. The mayor has urged New Yorkers who are not in high-risk categories to avoid flu shots so that stocks will be available for the elderly and others at risk. He said two weeks ago on the program that his mother's doctor did not have any vaccine, but that when some became available, he would call her in.
■ United States
New submarines in action
The US Navy was to commission yesterday the first of a new class of nuclear-powered attack submarine, designed more for intelligence missions close to shore than its Cold War predecessors, navy officials said. The USS Virginia, which is to be inducted into the navy in a ceremony in Norfolk, Virginia, can fire Tomahawk cruise missiles from a distance or it can be configured to slip a 50-member special operations force behind the lines, they said. The US$2 billion submarine is the first of 30 that the navy plans to buy, eventually replacing the current fleet of Los Angeles-class attack submarines made famous in movies like The Hunt for Red October.
NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
STICKING TO DEFENSE: Despite the screening of videos in which they appeared, one of the defendants said they had no memory of the event A court trying a Frenchman charged with drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her screened videos of the abuse to the public on Friday, to challenge several codefendants who denied knowing she was unconscious during their actions. The judge in the southern city of Avignon had nine videos and several photographs of the abuse of Gisele Pelicot shown in the courtroom and an adjoining public chamber, involving seven of the 50 men accused alongside her husband. Present in the courtroom herself, Gisele Pelicot looked at her telephone during the hour and a half of screenings, while her ex-husband
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
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